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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 21, 1998)
EDITOR Paula Lavigne OPINION EDITOR Joshua Gillin EDITORIAL BOARD Brad Davis Erin Gibson Shannon Heffelfinger Chad Lorenz Jeff Randall Our VIEW One step at a time UNO should remain urban school Sunday, the NU Board of Regents voted 7 1 to begin developing the first-ever housing units on the University of Nebraska at Omaha campus. Everything about these units points to a tra ditional start-up plan for residence halls. They will open in the fall of 1999. Century Development of Houston will finance and build them at an estimated cost of $10.6 mil lion. The units will provide 576 students with campus housing. But these are not residence halls. The six housing units will offer 576 stu dents apartment-style living. Each of the 144 “suites,” as they are called, will have four bed rooms, two bathrooms and a kitchen. These units will be allocated equally to athletes, inter national students and students participating in the honors program. ror uus, we appiaua uinu, dux we oner a word of caution: Don’t let this set a precedent. Don’t try to alter the very thing that has made UNO a unique part of the university system since its inception. Don’t destroy the sole purpose of Omaha’s university. UNO has always been a self-described “urban university.” Its mission is to serve the population of Omaha. It has traditionally been a non-traditional university. Times are changing. We understand that But to what extent are things going to change at UNO? A task force is currently looking at the uni versity’s long-term goals and reviewing its strate gic planning as we move into the 2151 century. Recently, UNO has taken strides to strength en its doctorate and athletic programs and facil ities. Plans are in the works for a state-of-the-art Peter Kiewit Institute of Information Science, Technology and Engineering to be built on 15 of the 70 acres UNO owns at Ak-Sar-Ben. These improvements, while strengthening UNO’s bid to become a “statewide center that also collaborates with visiting scholars,” cre ates more questions about its future than it answers. What population is UNO attempting to attract with this new technological investment? Promising young students? What additional amenities for students will need to be built to complement the Kiewit Institute? Some regents claim that additional housing will not be built on the Ak-Sar-Ben campus, but where are these students going to live? What exactly is all of this going to lead to? We recognize that there is a need for some student housing on the UNO campus. This new building fills the need. But it has to stop there. Nebraska does not have the population base to generate enough tax money to support two major state-funded universities. We think the creation of housing at the University ofNebraska at Omaha is a good idea. It is a good idea for the allotted 576 students. But don’t let this be set a precedent. Make this the exception, not the rule. Editorial Policy Unsigned editorials are the opinions of the Spring 1998 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 tetters 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 lettfs 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: tetters@unlinfo.unl.edu. Haney’s VIEW I vkii (kte (am A CUMtec ^ 1d ifc OW^D C«IS yp dU$E- J btelm hi l Mail bag _Columnists need your input KATYA OVCHARENKO is a sophomore English major and a Daily Nebraskan columnist. ■A . • • -V Letters ... deep and shallow, lov ing and hating, warm and cold, pri vate and official, long and short, run all over the world. Each carries pre cious feelings, or no feeling at all. Letters fly to bring congratulations and condolences, joy and grief, laughter and tears. I love receiving letters. A piece of soul is sent with every letter. Secret thoughts and tender feelings pour out on the cold paper and warm it up. Every paragraph, every sentence, every word and even every curve of every letter can give pleas ant feeling and vivid understanding that someone cares about you. That someone could have spent the whole day in pain, thinking about writing you a letter. Only the one who cares has enough courage to perform such a heroic deed! Phone conversations and e-mails can hardly give an opportunity to be free and express yourself. Letters make you think, really think - dig into the depths of your mind and heart and reveal yourself between the lines of the letter you write. Letters from home are one of the most important parts of my life here in the United States. I receive so many of them! You can’t imagine how great it is to read them day after day and receive a small piece of the caring heart of the sender with each reading. What phone conversations and e-mails are able to do the same? You can’t touch phone conversations and e-mails or hold them in your hands, tear apart and throw away, but you can do that with letters. To me letters are something hap , _ «— A piece of soul is sent with every letter. Secret thoughts and tender feelings pour out on the cold paper and warm it up.” pily exciting. I await letters (from my relatives and friends for exam ple). I pass by my mailbox and can not resist the temptation to look into the small cherished window of it, or in an extreme hurry to rummage in its lock with my key. The sweet and ticklish feeling of expectation fills my weak soul. Blood drums in my temples. Sometimes, the mailbox opens and I see nothing in there. Blood falls back and my feeling of expectation disappears - it hides for better times. Many days the story continues. I wait, look and leave dis appointed. But in that daily routine of searching for letters I have holidays. Those are the days when I suddenly receive a long-awaited letter. I pull it out with trembling hands from my mailbox and stare at the name on the envelope. I still can’t believe I’ve got a letter. Sure, after so many days of waiting! (Calm down! This time it’s really yours.) Fingers, keys and other devices sink ruthlessly into the innocent white flash of the envelope. They tear it with greatest ease. In some seconds, without any regret, the remainders of the envelope, disfig ured beyond recognition, are impu dently buried among other paper victims in the trash. I dive into the sea of lines. So, what do we have there? News from your best friend? Maybe this is the letter from your beloved parents, whom you miss so much.... My eyes run along the letter. They widen the same time my mouth transforms into a broad smile. I feel so happy that this stupid smile remains for a long time on my face after having read the letter. Those holidays give me soul food for some days, but when they pass, I am empty again. I need more and more! Each day my shrunken figure creeps to the mailbox, my eyes look for letters with a strange, maniacal flash, and the keys worry the lock of my mailbox one more time. Strange thing. The hope of receiving a letter this exact day never dies.... Letters.... Oh, I just love them! Now let me ask you something. Did you understand what am I dri ving at? You, my dear readers, I’m addressing you now. As a columnist, I expect to receive packages of letters from my readers (if the latter are available). I think this is the only way for me to find out if you guys need, like or hate my columns and my writing as a whole. I would like you to write me in any case, whether you liked a certain article or not. I really need your opinions - it will make my work for you in the Daily Nebraskan more valuable. If you doubt whether to wnte me a letter or not, think of a small, scared girl working at a newspaper for the first time in her life. Imagine that she really wants to know her readers’ opinions, and I think and hope with all my heart that after such thinking you’ll show mercy on her and write her a couple of lines. So if all of a sudden you have a feel ing like you want to write me at least something, do not hesitate! In general, all my colleagues, all columnists, not I alone, need your opinions about us. Just don’t be silent! Don’t sit there thinking that someone else will write us anyway! Please, don’t. We reveal ourselves to you in our columns, and believe me, we want to know our readers as well. Take this column of mine as a slogan: “Letters! - we need them so much.”
