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Best Ever Thespian love August 28,1997
Nebraska senior rush end Grant Wistrom, who Performance artist Sharon Hayes stages her
chose college over the NFL, is ready to start his multi-media project, “Lesbian Love Tour,” A SNOWBALL’S CHA ICE
senior season. PAGE 12 Friday at the Wagon Train Project. PAGE 15 Partly sunny, high 90. Partly cU iJ>' tonight, low 70.
VOL. 97 COVERING THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA-LINCOLN SINCE 1901 NO. 5
Higher ground
Sandy Summers/DN
STUDENT INSTRUCTOR PAT JANIKE, a senior civil engineering major, belays climbers on the wall Monday night at the Campus
Recreation Center. SEE STORY ON PAGE 3.
States argue over radioactive dump
Nelson’s summit aims for alternatives to Nebraska waste site
By Matthew Waite
Senior Reporter
After a decade of rancor, politics and more
than $150 million spent, a dogfight over a dump
has come to Lincoln.
Gov. Ben Nelson has called representatives
of the five states in the Central States Low-Level
Radioactive Waste Compact to the Comhusker
Hotel today to talk about alternatives to a
Nebraska dump site. Compact representatives
have said alternatives already have been dis
cussed.
The summit is another chapter in a storied
battle that has pitted rural Nebraska residents
against neighbors, electric companies, other
states and millions of electric ratepayers who are
picking up the tab for the compact.
Representatives from Nebraska, Arkansas,
Oklahoma, Kansas and Louisiana banded
together in 1981 after the federal government
ordered states to build their own waste dumps.
The dump in Nebraska would contain tools
and clothing contaminated with low doses of
radiation from nuclear power plants and research
institutions that use radioactive materials.
Nuclear power advocates say most of the
radioactivity would deteriorate in weeks or
months. However, some wastes would remain
radioactive for dozens to hundreds of years, they
say.
Since 1989, when Nebraska was picked as a
site for the dump, the project has been plagued
with problems ranging from police officers hav
ing to separate protesters and commissioners to
residents bringing rats in bags to meetings to
make a point.
Mere mention of the dump in Boyd County,
where the compact’s organizers wants to put the
dump, sparks ill feelings. The county has
become a flash point for proponents and oppo
nents. Both sides claim a majority, but the peo
ple remain sharply divided.
Loren Sieh, chairman of the Boyd County
Monitoring Committee, said residents are fed
up, and they are concerned for the wet environ
ment of northern Boyd County.
“They (compact commissioners) are like the
old farm horses in the field with the blinders on
plowing straight ahead and they are plowing into
a swamp,” he said.
Meetings, at times, have been circus-like,
with screaming matches, threats, slashed tires
and infighting among commissioners.
“It’s always combative,” said Laura Gilson,
chairwoman of the compact and Arkansas’ rep
resentative.
I
Aaron Steckelberg/DN
Compact commissioners claim Nelson ha:
applied political pressures to slow the compac
to a crawl through lawsuits, delays and hi;
appointment of a University of Nebraska
Lincoln economics professor to a committee o
environmental officials. Nelson denies that h<
has tried to slow the compact through politics.
But the compact has been slowed four yean
beyond its initial predicted opening date.
As it stands now, more than $150 million ha;
been spent, and ground has yet to be broken on s
dump that was to cost $31 million to complete
The last estimate aftei
Read the Daily Nebraskan on the World Wide Web at http:/ lwww.unl.edu/DailyNeb
Green
cautions
athletes
■ No preferential treatment
will be given to athletes, student
judicial affairs director says.
By Erin Gibson
Senior Reporter
About 145 University of Nebraska student
athletes learned not to expect special treatment
from Charles Green, student judicial affairs
director, this fall.
“All students - all'Students - are citizens of
this university,” Green said in an interview
after his speech to the athletes inside the Hewitt
Center. “Everyone’s going to be treated exactly
the same. There are no two standards for stu
''^SgWSMbtes”
The NU Athletic Department did not allow
media to attend Green’s speech, which was fol
lowed by a play that warned students to avoid
drugs and alcohol abuse and to help prevent
sexual assault and violence.
But Green later said he told the athletes that
they must be accountable for their actions -
both good and bad - at the university, and they
must “make the play” and make the right deci
sions both on the playing field and in life.
He provided every athlete with a Student
Code of Conduct in which he had marked
important sections in neon yellow highlighter.
All definitions of misconduct, the section
outlining illegal drug use and disciplinary
sanctions a student will incur after committing
an infraction of the code were included in the
highlighted section.
Green also highlighted the section defining
Please see ATHLETES on 8
Police want
cycle^free
sidewalks
By Ted Taylor
Assignment Reporter
Lincoln police have something to say to
bicyclists, skateboarders and in-line skaters:
Get off downtown sidewalks.
Officers are sending that message as
clear as they can with a little white piece of
paper that is usually reserved only for vehi
cles with four wheels - tickets.
Police have stepped up patrolling down
town and are now writing $26 tickets quick
er than you can say, “But officer.. ” They
\ Please see TICKETS on 4