EDITOR Paula Lavigne OPINION EDITOR Joshua Gillin EDITORIAL BOARD Brad Davis Erin Gibson Shannon Heffelfinger Chad Lorenz Jeff Randall I Our VIEW Quit whining! Despite price increase, tickets remain bargain Student football fans at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln are spoiled. Since 1995, students who have attended UNL have had the opportunity to take advantage of the best bargain in the nation: For $87.50, students could see one of the most consistently successful football teams in the nation go to battle six times during the fall at Memorial Stadium. For the low, low price of $ 14.50 a game, students watched the Huskers as they climbed to the top of the national ranks. They got to see the magic of Tommie Frazier and coaching legend Tom Osborne’s 200th career win. Two weeks ago, the NU Athletic Department decided it’s time for students to pay up. If UNL students want to see Husker football, they will have to pay $107.50 for six home games, an increase of $20. Predictably, students are upset. Some have vowed not to pay the extra money to attend Nebraska football games. To those students who have made that decision, we’ve got news for you: too bad. It doesn’t matter. “Obviously, we’re not just doing it for spite,” John Anderson, NU ticket office manager, told the Daily Nebraskan last week. “If we had a pitiful football team it wouldn’t make sense, but the demand is there, so you can charge a little bit more.” Anderson is right. The demand for stir dent tickets far exceeds the current supply of 8,000 seats, and that will make this price increase a success for the ticket office and the Athletic Department. And compared to several other top pro grams in the country, the price is still com petitive. At Oklahoma - a place where the wins haven’t exactly come in abundance the last few seasons - tickets are $125. At Penn State, the athletic department charges stu dents $90. The athletic department said the prices were raised to complete construction pro jects in Memorial Stadium such as new restrooms, concession stands and water proofing. The money also will go toward fixing the crumbling roof at the Bob Devaney Sports Center and adding two var sity sports - women’s bowling and a rifle team. . Students who support the Nebraska foot ball team want to see continued success. An important ingredient to that cause is money. In order for the Athletic Department to stay on the cutting edge, ticket prices had to increase because there are few other ways to add to the Athletic Department’s revenue. Taking these factors into account, stu dents cannot justify their complaints. Because in the end, Nebraska student football ticket prices for one of the most suc cessful programs in the nation are still a bar gain - even at $107.50. I Haney’s VIEW Hate offerings Opinions are good even if no one listens DANIEL MUNKSGAARD is a sophomore English and religious studies major and a Daily Nebraskan columnist Hey, how about that Hibler guy? Something about him is bound to make you mad, whether it’s what he did or how he’s being treated. Hey, get a load of Clinton and the mighty prosecutor Starr! Someone’s been dirty, someone’s an ass; and don’t we just love fighting about which one’s which? Aren’t you just horrified to open the paper these days? All these terri ble things, this sickening, repulsive obsession the media has with every thing un-newsworthy, unkind and just downright unwholesome. It makes you sick, doesn’t it? And that’s why you read it, isn’t it? Because admit it: You enjoy being offended. Why else do you open up to the opinion pages right after “The Deep End?” To be more informed? To see thought-provoking debate? Feh. If you wanted your mind chal lenged, you’d watch C-SPAN and invite ridicule upon yourself. You open to the opinion pages with two possible responses on your mind: “Amen!” or “To hell with you!” And those are the kind of responses most opinion writers struc ture their pieces around. If you learn something, if you read a piece that actually changes your mind on an issue, that writer was being sneaky, and you’ll probably avoid them in the future. Because you don’t want your mind changed, do you? Yes, I’m talk ing to you. I don’t care if you call yourself liberal, moderate, conserva tive or apathetic: You know every thing and are scared at the idea that things could be different. Hey, I’m no exception. Like / want to go back to being a funda mentalist Christian again. Like/ want to hear a rational argument for the death penalty. It’s a queasy, uncomfortable feeling to realize something you held dear is wrong, or at least misguided. You’ve got other things to worry about in life without having to restructure your moral sys tem every time some schmuck with a column or letter starts spouting off about (fill in the blank). But being offended, that’s another matter entirely. Like I said, we enjoy being offended. Why, I’m not sure. Maybe it’s because we’ve been taught that persecution is the ulti mate sign of righteousness. Or per haps we enjoy the rush of channeled anger. We just don’t have the outlets we used to, now that Soviet is a bunk word and Saddam makes us more tired than angry. God, don’t you remember how much fun the Soviets used to be? Or how about that Gulf War? The action/suspense/thriller of moral super-power vs. tyrannical madman in regular daily install ments; who could beat that? It’s why. we’re so fascinated by things like Nazis. Here we $ave a group of people responsible for some of the most despicable acts in record ed history. Not only were they aggressive, genocidal and bizarrely hypocritical, but they were damned good at it; really efficient. By all accounts, we should feel sick hearing about them, and quickly skip over that period of history with the reminder of “don’t do that,” and then talk about Ike. But instead, we’re obsessed with Nazis. We’ve got more World War II history buffs out there than any other event. Our films depict oodles of space Nazis, futuristic Nazis, neo Nazis, historical Nazis - the whole lot. And the sickening part is, we love them. Because they offend us so deeply to our core. We can hate them so much, and it’s OK! Because they’re Nazis! Why do you think Rush - Limbaugh calls women’s rights activists “feminazis”? Why do you think I sometimes call right-wingers “fascists”? Why do you regularly read opinion pieces by editorialists with views so alien to your own that they scare you? Because you can hate them. You can be righteously offended and secure in the knowl edge that you can’t possibly be as bad as they are. And who knows: Maybe you’ll get to be so offended that you can write a letter to the editor. Then you get to let the entire campus know your name, year and major, as well as an opinion they can associate you with and be appropriately offended by. This is, of course, no different than the desires of columnists. If anything, we’re even bigger gluttons for punishment, since we can be identified on sight. So please, keep the hateful letters flowing! Forget rational debate; the more insults you throw, the more we can ignore what you actually say and just get around to hating you. Give us more! How about that Hibler guy, any way? *-j •' W.- »- r'J - ; l: i ‘ : 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 letters to the editor and guest columns, but does not guarantee their pubfication. 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. £-mail: letters@unlinfo.unl.edu. PS. .Send letters to: Daily Nebraskan, 34 Nebraska Union, 1400 "R" St., Lincoln, NE 68588, or fax to (402) 472-1761, or e-mail