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HOLLY ZUMPFE, a junior psychology
major, listens to Jane Elliot speak
Wednesday night.
Byan SoderlimDN .
JANE ELLIOT greets the audience after speaking about racism and her famous
“Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes” experiment at the Centennial Room in the Nebraska "
Union Wednesday night.
Speaker asks students
to unlearn prejudice
By Erin Schulte
Senior Reporter
Making people mad is what Jane Elliot
does best.
Wednesday, she shocked and delighted
hundreds of UNL students with her blunt and
sometimes profane stories about racism, sex
ism and discrimination in general.
Elliot, who created the famous “blue eyes/
brown eyes” experiment to teach people how
it feels to be discriminated against, started
her three-hour sound-off against racism by
sharing her beliefs on issues people often ask
her about: abortion, her sexual orientation,
her guest spots on talk shows and politics.
But she soon went on to the real meat
and-potatoes of her talk: racism.
How did this white woman who lives in
Iowa become^ an expert on race?
When the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
was shot on April 4, 1968, Elliot said she
was at home ironing a tepee her third-grade
class had put together for their study of
American Indians. She was listening to the
news and heard a white male commentator
say to a black person “When our leader was
killed, his widow held us in line. Who’s go
ing to hold your people together?”
Please see ELLIOT o»6
Nebraska Union
construction bids
to be heard Friday
By Kasey Berber
Senior Reporter
Nebraska Union officials have reopened bids
for asbestos removal, following a series of un
acceptable bids. New bids will be heard Friday.
Daryl Swanson, director of the Nebraska
Union, said the asbestos removal project pro
duced seven rejected bids from construction
companies.
Swanson said the two lowest bids were from
out-of-state construction companies not licensed
to perform asbestos removal in Nebraska.
The third-lowest bid was from National Ser
vice Cleaning, the same company that has re
cently removed asbestos from Burnett Hall.
The bids ranged from $459,600 to
$1,022,345. National Service Cleaning’s bid was
$555,550.
“Their bid is not that far off from what we’re
looking at,” Swanson said. “But based on the
amount of the two lowest bids, we’ll try again.”
Bidding will also take place Friday for a gen
eral contractor for the Union expansion project.
Custody dispute
prompts standoff
By Erin Schulte
Senior Reporter • -
Lincoln Police officers and SWAT team
members waited out a midnight standoff
Wednesday with a distraught 32-year-old Lin
coln woman who periodically came out of her
house and pointed a shotgun at police officers.
Lincoln Police Capt. Allen Soukup said po
lice were having ongoing conversations with the
woman by telephone and on the front porch of
her home near 35th and Mohawk streets. A
neighbor called police arouijd 8 p.m. and said
the woman was despondent because of a child
custody situation.
The woman never fired her gun, Soukup said,
but some neighbors were asked to leave their
homes and others were asked to move to safe
parts of their houses. Police cruisers, ambulances
and a fire truck were parked on the the intersec
tions of Mohawk and 35th and 37th Streets to
act as barricades to prevent curious onlookers
from getting too close to the house. /•
Soukup said he thought conversations with
the woman were going well and he hoped the
standoff would be over during the nighttime or
early morning hours.
Rozier
% i-s'. -
By Steve Wilstein
The Associated Press
CAMDEN, N.J. (AP) — Wide
staples ran like a gridiron tattoo from
the middle of Mike Rozier’s chest to
his navel, flanked on the right by two
blackened bullet boles, as if they were
O’s in a gruesome football play sketch.
“If one of those ballets was just a
little bit over and hit the artery next to
my kidney, I’d be dead now,” the 1983
Heisman Trophy winner at Nebraska
said recently, nearly two weeks after a
street shooting almost killed him and a
friend.
A thick cast covers a wound where
a third bullet chipped off a chunk of
the knuckle and bone on his right in
dex finger, ripping through the back of
his hand and out the palm.
Down the hall at Cooper Hospital
he visits with his friend, Bart Merrill,
who also caught three bullets, one in
his back that came out his chest, an
other in his chest that tore into his lung,
and one in his left forearm.
Merrill’s 6-year-old daughter sits
on the side of the bed, licking a green
lollipop, staring curiously at the two
mm in gauze, tape and plaster. Prayers
and get-well cards from friends are
tacked on the wall.
They’ve heard the rumors, seen the
newspapers, know people are wonder
ing how Rozier, a running back who
made millions as a pro, came to be
gunned down in a “drug area” at 12:48
ajn. on Nov. 6. Police are not sure they
buy Rozier’s story — an unprovoked
attack by a drank. They wonder if there
is a more sinister motive behind it
‘Tm die one who got shot Now Tm
the bad guy,” Rozier said with a laugh,
shaking his head.
Some may wonder why Rozier is
even living in Camden, a South Jersey
city where gunfire is rampant, drugs
and drinking are everywhere, and
whole blocks look like boarded-up,
bombed-out war zones. Directly across
the Delaware River from Philadelphia,
Camden squeezes 200liquor stores and
200 churches into nine square miles—
sin and salvation in perpetual battle for
87,000 souls.
“They’re saying it’s a gangster
ghetto-dope thing. Rozier’s in the
wrong place. What’s he doing in
Camden?” the 35-year-old Rozier
said.
“Man, I’m from Camden. I was
bom and raised in Camden. When I got
done with football season, I always
came straight home. Most guys don’t
go home. They’re scared to go back
home because they fed like they failed.
I go home.
m—-^~———
To be honest with you, I never wanted to
- ' .... •'
play football. I wanted to be a trash
man.”
MbeRozeer
former NU running back
*1 started here and I want to end
here—not that Fm trying to get killed
or anything.”
Others might not hang out on the
street and drink beer with friends after
midnight behind rows of a HUD hous
ing project, but for Rozier there was
nothing unusual or especially danger
ous about it. This was his turf, a few
blocks from the white, two-story house
he’s long owned and fixed up nicely,
close to his soother’s house and the
friends he has known since childhood.
The football field at his high school,
Woodrow Wilson, bears his name.
’When bad things happen, people
are going to start rumors,” said Phila
delphia Eagles receiver Irving Fiyar, a
: Please see ROZIEK on 7
