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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 3, 1997)
EDITOR Paula Lavigne OPINION EDITOR Matthew Waite EDITORIAL BOARD Erin Gibson Joshua Gillin Jeff Randall Julie Sobczyk Ryan Soderlin Our VIEW Silent sorrow All human beings deserve respect On Tuesday morning, the State of Nebraska carried out its ultimate act of jus tice. The recipient of the justice was Robert E. Williams, the tool was the electric chair and the act was nothing more than the flips of a switch - brief motions that ended Williams’ life. And in a state that has shown over whelming support for capital punishment, a state that has used the electric chair three times in the last four years, Williams’ death seemed to be somewhat of an anticlimax. There were no drunken, angry mobs gathered in front of the state penitentiary, the State Capitol or the Governor’s Mansion. The manic chanting and scream ing that accompanied the deaths of Harold Lamont Otey and John Joubert were absent yesterday. Instead, small groups gathered to mourn lives lost both that morning and 20 years ago. And, thankfully, those groups were rela tively silent in their mourning. Perhaps this was the result of Nebraskans losing their zeal for loud protest. Perhaps we have all become anesthetized to the death penalty debate in the last few years, or maybe it was just too damn early in the day to yell and scream. Whatever the cause, it was a welcome change. In the hours surrounding past years’ executions, Nebraskans haven’t made themselves out to be the most civilized citi zens. ' .. We made the national news in 1994 when several of us paraded in front of the Nebraska State Penitentiary and turned Otey’s death into a tailgate party. We did the same thing in the summer of 1996 for Joubert. In doing so, we made a reality out of the stereotype of Nebraskans as violent, obnox ious, boisterous, beer-drinking fans. Killing is never pretty, but we made it downright appalling. When the state carries out its most final, brutal and ugly punishment, it never should be a cause for celebration - even if you’re glad it happened. Even if their deaths were justified or long overdue, you shouldn’t cheer. Even if they killed and raped and did unspeakable things, you shouldn’t applaud. Because even if they weren’t people you liked, the people who have died in Nebraska’s electric chair were - just that - people. And the death of a human being, no matter how monstrous that person’s life was, is still a death. On Tuesday morning, the people of Nebraska finally may have showed that they understand and respect that fact. And in doing so, Nebraskans gave Robert Williams the one thing that they did n’t give to Otey and Joubert. They gave him the one small thing every human life deserves: Respect. EMaiMev Unsigned editorials are the opinions of the Fail 1997 Daily Nebraskan. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Nebraska-Lincoin, 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 the regents, responsibility forthe 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 mSt 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 letters must identify themselves by name, year in school, major andfor group affiliation, if any. V - i Submit material to: Daiiy Nebraskan, 34 Nebraska Union, 1400 R St. Unjoin, NE. 68588-0448. E-mail: letters@unlinfb.unl.edu. Haney’s VIEW Guest VIEW Self-worth ! 1 Girls need to have faith that they can do anything LAURA VANERKAM is a columnist for The Daily Princetonian at Princeton University.' (U-WIRE) PRINCETON, N J. — The girl’s face in the New York limes was as set as the newsprint telling the story from Chautauqua County, N. Y. Amber Arnold, 18, sat outside a health clinic, waiting to 1rave her blood drawn for an AIDS test Like nearly 50 other young women, she had slept with Nushawn Williams, a man from New York City who had been in and out of the city’s jails for charges ranging from car theft and drug possession to murder. Williams found out he was HIV positive more than a year ago. Now he is facing assault * charges for knowingly infecting an unknown number of people. Barely an adult herself, Arnold was one of Williams’ oldest victims— authorities have already found a 13 year-old girl he infected. Many of the girls are homeless. Almost all are high school dropouts. Most met Williams through his drug pushing, spending their nights in his crack den when it was too cold to sleepoutside or the load runaway shelter was too tuff. Though it was clear Williams was not exactly faithful to her and that he had knowingly put her life at risk, Arnold was not mad at him. She described the thrill of being with some one from the city, of escaping the bore dom of blue-collar Chautauqua with its dead factories and abandoned houses. With nothing else in her rootless life to cling to, Arnold had followed the only man who paid ha attention, who had let ha feel she was worth something. This phenomenon of girls ruining their lives for men who leglike not so-great catches is hardly limited to upstate New York. In Indiana, where I live, my motha teaches a GED class for young women who dropped out of school to have children. The women are abort my age. Many already have, two or three children, whose fatha$are diverse members oftoe South Bend > deadbeat dads club. Two women in toe program found out their sons (who are roughly toe same age) were actually half brothers—toe boys’fatoa had been making toe rounds at a rate Williams would have approved of. Some of the women earn their GEDs. Some find jobs. Some escape South Bend’s housing projects with their recent nearly nightly shootings. But many have found men who pretend to promise a way out Like Williams, some of the men come from die big city (for Indiana, that’s Chicago). Others deal drugs and have money to buy jewelry and nice clothes, things a welfare check can’t cover. The trade-off is clean For a while, the man will treat the woman like she’s some one, with unprotected sex as the price. Then the man leaves and the woman is stuck with another baby or, like in Chautauqua, an HTV infection. And like Arnold, she doesn’t think her life is worth enough to tell him no. Dr. Mary Pipher caused a stir a few years ago with “Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls” when she pointed out this phenomenon of female self-esteem plummeting dur ing the teenage years. Before then, the girl is on top of the world. Anyone who lived through childhood will remember the invinci bility of being 10. By day the trees became launching pads for a mission to Mars and a box of old clothes in an attic could inspire the belief that one was the Queen of England. By night one could hide beneath a pillow with a flashlight, devouring Nancy Drew books—the old ones, that is, before she became more interested in shop ping than fighting crime. But then, something happened. The reasons are as varied as the girls involved. The girl grows and now keeps up with the first commandment of adolescence, preached by the gospel of Seventeen magazine that something is wrong if you don’t have a boyfriend. No longer are Saturdays spent planning a pirate’s conquest of die Mediterranean. Rather, they are spent navigating the mall, Take a look some time at the books and toys aimed at 12 year-old girls. The mindlessness of it all can make a person crazy. And that’s even for girls in the safe suburbs with daddy around Imagine how hard it must be growing up on a welfare check in the housing projects when your mother dropped out of school to have you at age 15, There’s every chance you won’t get out. That realization is enough to make a per son^ sense of worth plummet ^ ' Eventually, for some, it becomes so low that a drug-dealing, faithless man with several children by several women starts to look good. She thinks she needs a man. She feels lucky to have him. And she’ll do whatever he asks without expecting much in return. When Pipher interviewed some girls about their criteria for choosing sexual partners, one mentioned that he should first take her somewhere nice to eat, like McDonald’s. McDonald’s? To that girl, sharing part of herself was worth only the price of a Big Mac. $2.99 is a long way down from thinking you’re the Queen of England. ; But this doesn’t happen to every one, as many of Princeton’s women can attest to. A quotation a while ago in the Nassau Weekly summed it up. One male student said to another “You’ve got to realize two things. First, the girls here are smart. Second, they don’t need you.” i nats mues irom me pnnosopny or Williams’ victims or the women in my mother’s class. Why are we here in the Ivy League while Arnold waits for her test results from the Chautauqua Health Clinic? Maybe it has something to do with believing the same thing at 20 as at 10—that you cat do absolutely everything you think you can. This is the only way to make it through adolescence unscathed. I don’t know why some girls from rough cir cumstances make it while others don’t, but I also know that no government program can give a person the self esteem she can’tmuster on her own. No militant^ declared war on men can stop young women from falling for the wrong guys. And no Congress approved abstinence-at-all-costs sex education program is going to convince a girl that she’s worth a hell of a lot more than dinner at McDonald’s. } I do know that families, churches, schools and communities can’t give up on their girls. Chautauqua county is starting to realize this. Too bad it took an AIDS epidemic through the under ground of rootless teenagers to make peoplerealize that no one should have to fight through adolescence on her own. i