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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 21, 1996)
Garcia says to live’ diversity versity of Nebraska work more actively with minority organizations on campus. He said minority organizations he spoke with said ASUN didn't seem interested in the groups’ affairs. Eric Marintzer, ASUN president, said all the student organizations on campus were aware of the student government’s open-door policy. If a group thought it wasn’t being given adequate attention, it should send some members in to discuss the problem with an ASUN member. Human Rights Committee chair woman Anna Harms said there is a definite lack of student interest in di versity-related committees. She said on many jof these committees, there have been no applications from non-sena tors, even though ASUN has tried to publicize committee openings. Garcia said he was not trying tc accuse ASUN, but rather make sena tors question the attention they were giving to diversity issues. I Tan Your Student Body" j At European Tan Spa I The BEST DEALS on the BEST TAMS ■ are only 5 blocks from campus! log O'Street, Suite 216*1^*474-5355 W W FAC 4 - 7 pm Free Food & ^ $1 Pints and Longnecks $2.50 50<j: Draws SL Domestic 7 - 9 pm Pitchers The _ 10 pm -1 ai_ By Tasha £. Kelter Staff Reporter Ricardo Garcia, special assistant to the chancellor for affirmative action and diversity programs, gave ASUN senators suggestions Wednesday night on how they could promote diversity on campus. Garcia said students should not graduate from the University of Ne braska-Lincoln with no knowledge of how to deal with members of other cultures or ethnic groups. As leaders of the student body, ASUN senators have a responsibility “to make sure our students are prepared to be leaders in the global village,” he said. Garcia said students could not be come effective at dealing with diver sity without experiencing it firsthand. “You have to live diversity,” he said. One of Garcia’s ideas was to form a committee or subcommittee devoted to exploring racial and cultural issues on campus. He suggested that the As sociation of the Students of the Uni Speaker US. should back Wald Bank . By Kasey Kebber Senior Reporter The United States can benefit economically and morally from its support of the World Bank, an in ternational trade specialist said at Wednesday’s E.N. Thompson Fo rum. Diane Willkens, president and founder of Development Finance International Inc., denounced criti cism the World Bank has recently received from the U.S. Congress and American public. Congress, Willkens said, has played a negative role by choosing not to finance the economic efforts of developing countries like Bosnia. She said Congress had recently declared they would “zero out” seven of the nine Bosnian economic projects coordinated by the World Bank — but it still insisted upon having a military leadership role in Bosnia. Willkens attributed this “lack of vision” to a young Congress whose members lack international eco nomic knowledge. Willkens said that in 1995, the United States spent a “substantially low” 0.1 percent of its Gross Na tional Product on foreign aid. Yet the even the “low” $1.5 bil- . lion U.S. contribution in 1994 was repaid by $3.7 billion in revenue for American companies taking part in World Bank projects, Willkens said. Beyond lost or gained revenue, Willkens said the United States had a responsibility to support the World Bank because of what it provided for the international community. Willkens said the bank loaned money to countries for the finance of education, agriculture, health, nu trition and other projects. In 1995 alone, Willkens said the World Bank funded 256 projects around the globe with $21.4 billion in loans. Criticism, Willkens said, should end and with a better education on the World Bank and its purposes, progress should now be made. “We just started learning this game and we can’t stop now,” Willkens said. Speaker brings race lessons to UNL ELLIOT from page 1. John F. Kennedy Jr. was “our leader,” and King was “your” leader. “You aren’t really citizens” was the message to black people everywhere, Elliot said. “I was absolutely furious,” Elliot said. So the next day, when students asked her about the assassination, she decided to teach her third-grade stu dents, who were all white, a lesson about racism. She separated children in the class according to their eye color—blue or brown. Eye color was an appropriate trait because of its place in racism’s history. Adolf Hitler’s Aryan nation was supposed to be a master race of people formed primarily on the basis of eye color, she said. Josef Mengele, known as the “Angel of Death,” was a Nazi medicd doctor at Auschwitz concen tration camp. He conducted experi ments on how to chemically or surginalsurgically change eye color, so if they found any brilliant Jews with brown eyes, they could be changed to blue and be part of the master race, Elliot said. The eye color also was important because it was a characteristic the stu dents had no control over and could not change. “That’s the anatomy of prejudice,” she said. “I created racism in my class room to see what happened.” For one day, Elliot told students that one eye color was inferior and ground proof of it into their heads by con stantly putting down or ignoring stu dents with the “inferior” eye color. The next day, the experiment was reversed so the other eye color was “inferior.” Students with the “inferior” eye color became withdrawn, self-con scious and did poorly on tests. Chil dren with the “superior” eye color were vicious to the students who were “in ferior.” The “superior” students per formed much better on tests and some dyslexic students even read with sur prising ease. When a student with brown eyes asked her why she, an inferior blue eyed being, was teaching the class, Elliot was aghast. “I thought, well, that little shit! It wasn’t supposed to happen to me! “I was shocked at how much they knew about being a racist,” Elliot said. “They knew every negative stereotype ever heard about blacks.” She told them, as she tells people today, “It’s time to unlearn your rac ism.” When she told colleagues in the teacher’s lounge about children’s re actions to the experiment and the as sassination, one teacher had a reply that today could get her fired, but then brought nods of acknowledgement: “I thought it was about time somebody shot that son-of-a-bitch.” The shockwaves created by Elliot’s experiment soon went much further than the teacher’s lounge. Johnny Carson got his hands on a copy of the local newspaper, which ran the story of her classroom tactics, and brought her on TV. Ever since then, she has been making appearances on talk shows and news shows. But it’s not necessarily the way she wants it to be. She has paid a price for her notoriety, she said. “If I had known that my four off spring would be spit on, their belong ings destroyed, physically and verbally abused because they had a nigger-lover for a mother, I wouldn’t have done the exercise,” Elliot said. She noted that she used the term “nigger-lover,” be cause that was exactly the term used to describe her. And it all started with a prayer. It’s the same prayer she is saying today: “Oh Lord, make me an instru ment of Thy peace.” “Be very, very careful about what you pray for,” Elliot said. Elliot said the first solution to calm racial tension in the United States is to recognize color differences — don’t ever say “When I look at you, I don’t see you as black.” “In effect, white people are saying ‘In order for me to be comfortable around you, we have to get rid of this unfortunate problem of your skin color,’” Elliot said. “There is nothing wrong with see ing (people as they are). We don’t need a color-blind society.” It’s what she calls the “Hilex syn drome”: there’s something wrong with being something other than.white. The second solution, she said, is to throw out the idea that the U.S. is a melting pot. “That means we can mix everybody together, stir and come up with the ‘ideal’ American: a white male,” Elliot said. A better comparison, she said, would be a stir fry — all parts sepa rate, different, maintaining their iden tities and values. “You see differences as a positive, not as a negative,” Elliot said. “I don’t want to be tolerated, I want to be ap preciated.” * And most of all, people should re alize what race is: not black, white or red—human. _ “You are all members of the same race,” she said. “You are all brothers and sisters, whether you like it or not.” Smokeout hopes to help extinguish habit By Ebin Gibson StaffReporter Snuff out those cigarettes, put down the hip cigars and spit out the chew; today is die Great American Smokeout. For 24 hours, smokers are en couraged to quit all tobacco prod ucts and start down the road to bet ter health, said Kris Waline, public relations intern at the University Health Center. Jamie Fassnacht, development specialist for the Ariierican Cancer Society, which sponsors the event, said trash barrels are scattered over Lincoln public school and college campuses today for students to dis pose of their tobacco. All tobacco collected will be burned at Lincoln General Hospital at 3 pjn. today, she said. Waline said smokers who need support can find help from more than 100 health aides in campus housing units, who will “take smok ers under their wings for the day.” Balloons, gum and information on the effects of tobacco and quit ting will be available along with “survival kits” from a health center booth in the union, she said. Those who do not smoke can also join the effort by adopting a smokfcr for the day, she said. Offi cial adoption papers will also be available at the union booth. Fassnacht said the American Cancer Society reports a falling smoking rate among American adults, but a lot of young people starting. The society estimates that 177,000 new cases of lung cancer will be diagnosed during 1996, and that another 158,700 Americans will die from lung cancer by the end of this year. Mass grave experts to address Anthropology Club By Josh Funk Staff Reporter Two forensic anthropologists who have spent their careers examining mass graves around the world will speak to the UNL Anthropology Club Friday. -Melissa Conner and Doug Scott will talk about their experiences ex huming bodies from mass graves in Rwanda, El Salvador and the forma’ Yugoslavia at 5 pjn. in Bessey Hall Auditorium. Conner and Scott examine dead bodies to determine the cause of death and gather information about the lives of the deceased prior to their death. Most recently, they have been work ing with Physicians fen* Human Rights to complete mass-grave exhumations •. \ in the former Yugoslavia. Their find ings are being used in United Nations Tribunals to prosecute war crimes com mitted during the recent Balkan war. The two will discuss how forensic anthropology is used, using examples from their work in the former Yugo slavia. The presentation is free and open to the public. A short reception will follow.
