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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 13, 1997)
EDITOR Paula Lavigne OPINION EDITOR Matthew Waite EDITORIAL BOARD Erin Gibson Joshua Gillin Jeff Randall Julie Sobczyk Ryan Soderlin I Our* w VIEW In the zone Students need place to speak freely For weeks now, students, staff and even we have been complaining about the amount of “fun” people have taken from defacing our campus. But now, things have gotten out of hand. It went from toilet paper, to hate speech to paint, and there are no signs of things get ting any better. The vandals are here, and until action is taken - far beyond declara tions and press statements - things aren’t going to get better. And it’s all vandalism. Chalking. Toilet papering. Now painting. No matter how you package it, it’s still ugly. And whoever decided that chalk was not good enough to mark on things, but paint was - that was cheap. In just a short time, you defaced the alumni association, com mitted a federal crime by defacing a mail box, and you made an already bad situation worse. You should be proud of yourself. Really. Call your mom. Tell her all about it. But, grudgingly, we admit that the side walk chalk - a child’s toy in collegiate hands that washes off as easily as it scratches on - is a form of expression. Thanks to the First Amendment, a state institution such as ours has no right to tell you what to say. But, thanks to the Supreme Court, it can tell you where and when you can say it. Time and place restrictions are perfectly constitutional. And it’s about time the university did some of that. I Before the days of Nebraska Union con place,;w2ere*liidf^^ preachers could havetheir fun. But with heavy construction, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s free speech place is gone, and with it has come what seems to be chaos. Student groups used to be able to ask the Nebraska Union if they could chalk the plaza, and it was no problem. Union staff washed it away as soon as the event they were chalking about was over. But now the chalkers and painters have declared open season on our campus. ; It’s time we got our free speech place back. A place needs to be designated, a clear and simple process of obtaining permission to chalk needs to be established, and punish ments for those who color outside the lines needs to be made quite clear. Why not make the nice, long, high-traffic strip of sidewalk that runs from the union to Andrews Hall the new free speech place? Student groups could get their permits and chalk the daylights out of it. Everyone - yes, everyone, regardless of content - could get his or her message out there. Sorority sneaks, gay and lesbian events, speakers, Homecoming, the campus chapter of the KKK - everyone could chalk until their fingers went numb. And the rest of the campus could be spared. The university needs to step into the void and give us our free speech place back. Eiitarial Policy Unsigned editorials are the opinions of the Fall 1997 Daily Nebraskan. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, its employees, its student body or the University of Nebraska Board of Regents. A column is solely the opinion of its author. The Board of Regents serves as publisher of the Daily Nebraskan; policy is set by the Daily Nebraskan Editorial Board. The UNL Publications Board, established by the regents, supervises the production of the paper. According to policy set by the regents, responsibility for the editorial content of the newspaper lies solely in the hands of its student employees. Letter Policy The Daily Nebraskan welcomes brief letters to the editor and guest columns, but does not guarantee their publication. The Daily Nebraskan retains the right to edit or reject any material submitted. Submitted material becomes property of the Daily Nebraskan and cannot be returned. Anonymous submissions will, not be published. Those who submit tetters must identify themselves by name, year in school, major and/or group affiliation, if any. Submit material to: Daily Nebraskan, 34 Nebraska Union, 1400 R St. Lincoln, NE. 68588-0448. E-mail: letters@unlinfo.unl.edu. Cartoonist’s „ , VIEW IS 7WAT A N/gVONAL TEST m's taking? THAT INFRINGES \ ON THE fti&HTS OF STATES' ENGLISH AMO STATES'MAT#/. , | r bet n's bilingual. ARE THOSE - ; ENGLISH WORDS AND ENGLISH NUMBERS ? mi'- _ .• IS iUL-Jr— DN LETTERS Reactionary reaction One of the chronic problems with liberalism is its tendency to overdo, and therefore ironically undermine, the means employed to achieve its ends. In art, we call this the “dialecti cal conversion,” which means push ing a tendency to its extreme - even tually resulting in its opposite effect. Nowhere better can this be seen but here on campus, scrawled all over the sidewalks - aphorisms, written with good intentions, desperately falling prey to the “dialectical conversion.” “Queers are here!” “Queers are Everywhere!” The problem here is not with the struggle for equality, the liberalist’s end, but again, the means. The necessity of awareness, in this case, is in itself retrogressive. What does telling everyone that I prefer men, sexually, to women, or that my sister prefers women to men, do? Gay-bashing is reactionary. It is a response by people who believe that “queers” are like locusts, a sign of the apocalypse! They are here! They are everywhere! And we know that these people are irrational, and so we move on. Is it not, then, important to ques tion whether letting irrational people know who you prefer sexually is only fodder, or an impetus, for discrimi nation, dangerous or violent behav ior? This does not mean that homo sexuals should stay in the closet. Yet the inability to reconcile sexual pref erence is due to the dichotomy between “gay” and “straight” sus tained and perpetuated by gay activists who claim discrimination. Forceful, cynical or hostile activism, like (that of the) night chalkers on UNL campus, is not pro ductive. In fact, it is such “activism” that creates further hostility and divi sion, and forces Christian activists, Mothers Against Anything Remotely Decadent, or Not entirely Earthy activists, Nebraska Hicks for Hicks Equality, or UNL League for a Better Understanding of Our Hickness activists, “SAQ” or Sportsters Against Queers activists to come out of their closets; and, on some odd sort of religiously justified grounds, kick the crap out of homosexuals. The willingness to stay in the closet about your sexuality is not a denial of who you are, but contrarily a silent recognition, if not affirma tion, that you are comfortable enough with who you are that you do not require public validation. Someone wrote on the sidewalk just outside Andrews Hall “Shakespeare was gay!” Putting the unsubstantiated factual nature of the comment aside, one could argue hypothetically, that Shakespeare’s reaction to that comment would have been “If I am gay, it is none of your damn business!’^Sometimes it is silence that makes the wo/man. Benjamin Carson graduate student English Why? If it’s so normal to be gay, why do you have to come out? Why don’t we have a National “I’m Heterosexual and Damn Proud of It Day”? I have absolutely no problems with anyone who.chooses to be a homosexual, lesbian or bisexual. But my problem is this: I don’t heed to know how OK it is to be gay. Great, you ve maae your cnoice, but do you have to announce it? I don’t care, and I know tons of other students who care more about whether or not they should eat Ramen noodles or pot pies than what someone else’s sexual preference is. I don’t like walking to class and seeing “Shakespeare was Gay,” and “I’m Bob and I love Tom, and that’s OK, ‘cause it’s OK to be gay.” All this writing is worthless. I think it gives our school a bad image. All this was just an incentive to have homo phobes write words of their own (which welill should have known was coming). Not only does this make news, but it makes gays and lesbians look like these poor people who have done nothing to deserve this hideous treatment and we should all bear tears of pity for this poor, prejudiced part of our society. Why don’t we concentrate on the news that actually makes a difference to the world, and our student lives. Let’s focus on technology, world eco nomic affairs and world politics, not on how great it is to be gay. Chad De Moss sophomore computer science Chancellor: Community should work to educate all For the last year and a half, I’ve been talking with the uni versity community about the need for increased respect and appreciation of the differences we find in a diverse learning environment. But earlier this week, we experienced yet another disruption of the civili- “ ty one should expect from such an environment. Hateful messages such as those chalked on our sidewalks a few days ago are extremely harmful, whether they are aimed at a group with a certain sexual orientation, a group with a certain ethnicity or a group whose politics are in the minority. These messages are antithetical to an atmosphere of learning and create a climate of fear and hostility. They will not be tolerated at the University of iNeorasKa. We must work harder to educate every individual about the need to respect one another. I believe we are going m the right direction, but I challenge every member of our commu nity to redouble his or her efforts. Take some time to con sider the Student Code of Ethics that was approved unan imously by ASUN last March. In part, it says “I will be respectful toward all others, their thoughts and aspirations, and will look upon them with equality and fairness.” I am extremely proud of our students for sending this strong message, and Lam equally proud of ASUN’s actions last week in unanimously con demning this most recent example of intolerance. I urge the entire campus community to follow the lead of these stu dents. James Moeser UNL chancellor