v EDITOR ./ Paula Lavigne OPINION EDITOR Matthew Waite EDITORIAL BOARD Erin Gibson Joshua Gillin Jeff Randall Julie Sobczyk Ryan Soderlin - • "! ' r . ■ ■■■ ■ ■— 1 Our VIEW Wake up Class participation fosters thought Somewhere between the cover and the end credits of a text book, and among the many lectures dished out over the course of the semester, there must be a little room for a rebellion. No, not a throwing-your-chair-at-the overhead rebellion, but a rebellion in thought. It’s extremely easy to sit in any class from 101 to 865 and just absorb informa tion. Information comes in. It’s stored in your memory. The test comes. It’s regurgi tated on paper. End of story. You’ve learned something almost as valuable as being able to repeat the alpha bet backward. In other words, you haven’t learned anything worthwhile. It’s sad that so many students - and pro fessors - are content with this. But what does that A really mean when all it means is that you can remember and repeat? And only for a short time, at that? What needs to happen in all universi ties classes is the encouragement of inde pendent thought. You really cannot nod off when your jaw is moving. So instead of pinching yourself to stay awake during a lecture, try to participate. And instead of jawing on, professors should encourage open discussion. Obviously, the professor is going to lead that discussion. And some days, students ar^ibout as responsive as road kill. But it’s the principle of the matter. There is an exchange to be found. Allow yourself to voice an opinion or even challenge one. And be willing to accept a challenge. It’s easy to move from chapter to chapter with a nice, tidy outline. It’s better to allow students to carry professors off on tangents and explanations. Even tenured professors need to allow their teachings to be challenged. A good debate is usually a good discus sion, and there is much to be learned from watching people defend their positions. And there is much to learn from having to defend your own. Making your point, and having to defend it, forces you at once to re-evaluate what you believe and gain more confidence in what you believe is true. There is valuable information to be absorbed, but it’s not really going to sink in unless students can take ownership in that information. And while research papers and presentations are novel ways to do that, they don’t foster the feedback and interac tionthat independent thinking would dur ing the class with all the students present. Aside from making class a little more interesting, it should foster the “life of the mind” that university administrators desire. This is the reason why students are the ones paying to learn. coiiunai roiicy Unsigned editorials are tiie opinions of the Fall 1997 Daily Nebraskan. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Nebraska-Uncoln, 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 Daly Nebraskan; poticy 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 becomeeprop^rty of the Daily Nebraskan and cannot be returned. Anonymous submissions will not be published. Those who submit letters must identfly themselves by name, year in school, mayor and/or group affiliation, if any. r Submit material to: Daily Nebraskan, 34 } Nebraska Union, 1400 R St Lincoln, NE. 68580-0448. E-mail: letters@unlinfb.unl.edu. Haney’s VIEW it* lHAr YfeAT / "Ho* navjlac€. Good Journalism, part I Predictably enough, the Daily Nebraskan decided to forgo any attempt to actually report the faculty senate debate on the King holiday, in favor of a propagandistic juxtaposi tion of the vote with a report of the Chancellor’s Commission on the sta tus of People of Color. For the benefit of the DN readers thus shortchanged by your reporter, the principal arguments against the King holiday and the fall break were logistical. Shortening the semester by one day creates major problems for laboratories, recitation sections and distance education courses that meet only on Mondays. Some of us spent a considerable amount of time looking at the impact of adding an extra Monday break, and concluded the likely result would be to reduce those components of our curriculum by a full week in both the spring and fall semesters. n It’s easy to mouth slogans about a ‘motherhood’ issue like the King hol iday. After all, who among us, these days, would disagree that King was a great man, and should be suitably honored? It takes a little more maturi ty, and, yes, time and effort to realize thpt any change we institute has con sequences, and to weigh those very real consequences against the more intangible institutional benefits of such a holiday. Of course, that’s a complex issue, not easily reducible to the sloganeer ing the DN seems to confuse with journalism. Gerard S. Harbison professor of chemistry and fac ^ ulty senator Good Journalism, part II It is with great distress that I saw an advertisement from the Committee for Open Debate On the Holocaust in the Daily Nebraskan. The firsts amendment rights, the right of people * to freely voice themselves and their opinions, however erroneous and fraudulent these may be, are indis putable. However, this constitutional protection of free speech is not extended to advertisements; especial ly not fallacious quasi-historic adver tisements. An advertisement for the revision ist view of history should not be i-....* looked upon as a mere advertisement. It is a dangerous and reprehensible statement that in effect condones its contents. I have two objections to the DN’s policy of running this. It is not only the inclusion of the advertisement in the DN that is outrageous, but also the cowardly way the editors deal with this issue. Attaching an inadequate disclaimer to an offensive and repre hensible advertisement does not make a wrong right. If the DN is so cash strapped that it is compelled to include quasi-historical advertise ments to fund itself, it should proba bly re-evaluate its existence. I call on the DN to return any fees it has collected for this advertisement and make an equal contribution to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum or review its advertisement policies. Furthermore, the disclaimer states that “advertisements in the Daily Nebraskan do not necessarily reflect the view of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, its student body or the University Board of Regents.” This disclaimer implies that these bodies do not necessarily condemn this advertisement, and a revisionist view of history, but they do in fact condone it. I do not want to speculate on the reasons why this advertisement was included. One reason to include this advertisement might have been to liven up the tepid debate in the DN. Using a revisionist view of history to spark a debate is immature, impru dent and inappropriate. Peter Went graduate student l business Good Journalism, part HE Wednesday, the Daily Nebraskan published an advertisement from the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust. This committee has been buying ads in campus newspapers around the country to spread their specious tale of holocaust denial. This is not sloppy scholarship. It is an intentional distortion of history. Its subtext is hate, a virulent strain of anti-Semitism. This campus should be a place where ideas are debated and the truth sought. As our vision statement reads, “We seek the truth for its own sake.” However, let us not confuse the advo cacy of controversial ideas'with the pursuit of an agenda that is intended to injure and harm others. I feel com pelled to state my abhorrence of this ad and the message behind it. Janies Moeser chancellor Good Journalism, part IV The late Mike Royko, in one of his editorials, wrote “What has Mexico done besides given us tequila?” and was censored for this remark. Now a senior news-editorial major and Daily Nebraskan columnist writes, “When I s find out who this El Nino fellow is, I am gonna kick his Mexican ass.” It saddens me that there are those on this campus and across the country who continue to choose to write inflammatory, insensitive and igno rant remarks that contribute to the continued negative stereotype and image of certain groups. There is no doubt that El Nino is a fascinating phenomenon. It doesn’t take a genius to know that El Nino has little to do with Mexico or a “Mexican ass.” El Nino means “boy child” or- ^ “little pne” in Spanish and refers to the Christ child. The name was coined by a Peruvian fisherman for the warm current that visits South America peri odically around Christmas. i here are those who are now blaming El Nino for last week’s storm. Willey takes this blaming even further and proposes to do violence to a cer tain body part of a certain ethnic indi vidual. Equally disturbing was the Daily Nebraskan’s editorial board’s decision to put this paragraph in the quotes of the week. Did they find this quote so “interesting,” “funny” or “newswor thy”? When I questioned the DN staff about the criteria for choosing the quotes, they confirmed my initial impression of their insensitivity. I find their decision to be in poor taste. Reporters write about what they know, what they feel and what they sense. Both Steve Willey and Mike Royko have gone beyond the latitude of good j ournalism. Marty Ramirez UNL Counseling and Psychological Services iniMiii t—n—-——t % h — i .. ...