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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 4, 1997)
EDITOR Paula Lavigne OPINION EDITOR Matthew Waite EDITORIAL BOARD Erin Gibson Joshua Gillin Jeff Randall Julie Sobczyk Ryan Soderlin I Our VIEW Buyback backlash Professors ’disregard costs students We live in a world of deadlines. Everyone has them. Things have to get done. And they have to get done at a certain time of the day, week, month, semester. If we don’t, there are conse quences. Simple concepts, eh? Ever handed in a paper late? Not fun, is it? You get punished, usually in the form of a lower grade. That affects your GPA and your future. So you get the picture quite quickly - do your work on time, or face the consequences. But here at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, it seems that broken deadlines only affect students. Even if we aren’t breaking the deadlines. Every student knows all too well the pain and suffering that is involved with buying books. And every students knows all too well the pain and suffering - and the insult - of sell ing those books back for pennies on the dollar. Guess what? It isn’t bookstores’ fault. Believe it or not, when you sell your book back, the bookstores want to give you 60 cents on the dollar. That’s right. For a $ 10 book, you’d get $6. But it doesn’t take a math major to figure out that’s not what you get. There’s a reason for that. It’s called missed deadlines. And you didn’t forget to hand something in. Your professor did. The bookstores survive on lists. They need lists of the books professors are going to use in their classes next semester, so they know what they need to keep, and what they can get rid of on wholesale. If they have next semester’s list, and the book you used this semester is on it, the book stores buy it back at 60 percent, because they know they are going to sell it again. You get more money, they make a profit, and every one is happy. If they don’t, well, you get 10 to 30 per cent, because that’s what the bookstore can get when the wholesalers come around. Then, when they get the lists late, they have to get them back from the booksellers. No one makes any money, and no one is happy. As of todav. onlv two deoartments in the entire university met the book list deadline of Oct. 24. Two. Not one, not three: two. If two people in your class handed a paper in on time, your professor would throw a fit. As it is now, Dec. 4,1997,25 percent of all the book lists are in. Only one quarter of our faculty cares enough to give students the difference between 10 percent and 60 percent. Buyback is rapidly approaching. We would be shocked if 75 percent of this univer sity got their act together and got the book stores their book lists. Guess we won’t be super-sizing our post book selling meals. - M EHIMmi rvHCv 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 pubfisher 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. IWfNNy The Daily Nebraskan welcomes brief letters to the editor and guest columns, but does not guarantee their pubGcabon. 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 and/or group affiliation, if any. Submit material to: Daily Nebraskan, 34 Nebraska Union, 1400 R St Lincoln, NE. 68588-0448. E-mail: letters@unbnfo.unl.edu. - . • m • Haney’s VIEW Justice denied The execution of Robert Williams on Tuesday was a miscarriage of jus tice. The fact that he was executed 18 years after his death sentence painful ly shows the ineffectiveness of our legal system. This bastard was on death row since the time I was bom. A husband who came home to find his wife’s broken, violated, bloody body has been denied justice my entire life. Justice delayed is justice denied. The system is responsible for this unnecessarily lengthy period of pain for the victims and their families. People are only realty put to death long after everyone (except the vic tims) has forgotten what they did. No wonder people are protesting it. The death penalty could be a good r thing, if it were carried out as it should be. For every crime, there should be restitution. Not to society or to the government, but to the vie mu. A car thief should replace his vic tim’s car, and a thief of human life should repay with his own. I think he should have died once for every rape and murdered woman. You can only kill them once, though. At least he didn’t die of natural causes before they had the chance to execute him. Matt Callicoat freshman computer engineering Missed the point, partner In your Tuesday editorial on the killing of Robert Williams by the state of Nebraska, you write about the behavior of death supporters at previ ous executions: “Killing is never pretty, but we made it downright appalling.” You miss the point, partner. Killing by the government is always i~ '' — “downright appalling.” That the tremendous power of the state can be prostituted into the merciless act of killing humans is amazing. The secret of it is to turn the con demned into animals, aliens, “the others” in the eyes of the public. That is the same trick that is used by any government in order to goad its people into supporting war. Turn the enemy into nonhumans, and peo ple will be glad to kill them. Anyone who took the effort to get to know Robert Williams in recent years would easily recognize that the man put to death on Tuesday through the awesome power of the • • - J state was indeed a human - - a warm and caring man - ^ one who had committed terrible crimes in the past, ^jl but a real human nonethe less. Nebraska’s act of mur der refuses to recognize that and is just an act of depravity. Dr. T. T. Fitzgerald Baltimore, Maryland 1971 alum of UNMC Which coat? Maybe I was still dizzy from seeing Cornhusker shots clank off the rim in the second half against Tulsa Monday night, or did I really see a letter from a Nebraska basketball coach in the DN Monday morn ing? A coach who believes that UNL can support a big time sport other than foot ball. A coach who promis es fast-paced, in-your-face basketball. A coach who dares to suggest his team can compete with the top 10 teams in the nation if they have student support. A coach that has won an NCAA tournament game. Wait a second, it was the women’s basketball coach ... of the 12th ranked team in the nation, which has already played three top 25 teams this year. Maybe some other coach at UNL, between big games this weekend against North Carolina-Wilmington and Cornell, can sit down, analyze, and learn from this. ; BrandonVerzal >v/,:a)ix jrl.-fuj /junior . sti ozbo P.S. Write 3ack !$§