EDITOR
Erin Gibson
OPINION
EDITOR
Cliff Hicks
EDITORIAL
BOARD
Nancy Christensen
Brad Davis
Sam McKewon
Jeff Randall
Bret Schulte
Our
VIEW
Blood-alcohol
discontent
Tactics needed to avoid
drunken driving disasters
Enough 16- to 20-year-olds died in alco
hol-related car crashes in 1994 to replace
every engineering college undergraduate at
the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
The approximately 2,222 deaths would
wipe out nearly half of the arts and sciences
undergraduates and one-quarter of the student
section at Memorial Stadium. It would wipe
out die architecture college students more than
four times.
Last year, these statistics ripped into the
flesh of our campus when student Laura
Cockson was killed by a drunken driver. Many
students pledged to stop drinking and driving,
while many others pledged to become activists
for the cause.
But drunken driving remains common in
Lincoln, and a lot of it starts downtown - just
right around the comer from the university."
The figures on local drunken driving
arrests prove another death could happen here
soon. As of Nov. 1, Lincoln police had arrested
about 1,130 offenders this year for driving
while intoxicated - a figure about 20 percent
hiaher than last vear
It’s good to know drunken drivers in
Lincoln have a good chance of being caught.
But for every one arrested, many more were on
the road.
Ana national statistics snow nrst-time
DWI offenders who are arrested have an aver
age blood-alcohol concentration of. 19. People
are legally drunk with .10, and drinkers’ dri
ving ability is considerably impaired at .05 -
just two drinks for a 160-pound male.
The fact that first-time offenders have an
average blood-alcohol content of almost dou
ble the legal level tells us that people are dri
ving while obviously intoxicated, and that
police with limited resources catch mostly the
worst drunken drivers.
It’s not the fault of the police. It’s the fault
of every Lincoln student and resident who
does not wholeheartedly believe drunken dri
ving is akin to driving with the intent to harm
or kill.
It’s the fault of everyone who has watched
friends drive away from a bar or party with
four or more beers under their belts.
It’s the fault of every person or group - and
that includes us - who has asked, “Are you OK
to drive?” then has believed drunken friends
when they answered, “Yeah, I’m fine. I quit
drinking a couple of hours ago.”
This holiday season, Lincoln police have
more training to detect impaired drivers than
they did last year.
They’re doing their part to save our lives.
We must meet them halfway.
Promise yourself you will help prevent
drunken driving this holiday season. Give
friends and family your phone number in case
they need an emergency ride home. Be a des
ignated driver. Write the number for a Lincoln
taxi service in your wallet.
And, for more than 2,000 Lauras’ sakes,
don’t drink and drive away.
i—ilium
Unsigned editorials are the opinions of
the FaH 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.
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the regents, supervises the production
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IMWHfci
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« Mook’s
VIEW
DN
LETTERS
Hostility not unjust
What? You mean there was a reli
gious component in our early
American history? How dare you be
so politically incorrect (“The first
thanks: Insight given into roots of
holiday,” Tuesday)! Wait until the
academics get hold of what you
reproduced. They’ll expunge this
offending document immediately
before it contaminates our public
school children.
As for the unhappy relationships
with the Indians, the Puritans, of
course, could not rest secure then, as
now, on the white man’s total domi
nance and control; then they could
hardly be magnanimous without risk
ing death. Perhaps they had an excuse
to feel apprehensive, even hostile.
The obvious struggle with their faith
in God during those utterly demoral
izing times is a fascinating study in
itself- a theme in early American his
tory that is nowadays, by law and
spiritual unease, consigned to obliv
ion. In either case, in terms of reli
gion or security, those folks lived in a
very different time, with very differ
ent perspectives.
By contrast, we, whose greatest
dread is having to sign up for an 8
a.m. class and whose racial and eth
nic relationships are comfortably the
oretical anyway, may have trouble
appreciating this difference.
Jon Mark Ruthven
associate professor
systematic theology
Regent University .
School of Divinity
Virginia Beach, Va.
... for a reason, anyway
The reproduction of the first
Thanksgiving proclamation on
your editorial page (“The first
thanks,” Tuesday) was, like
all good propaganda, shorn
of any historical contc
Perhaps you’ll permit me
provide it
The proc
written toward the
King
Philip
tionate terms
war in American hist<
It kill-ed more people
as a percent
age of the total
population
than any- con
flict before or
since. It was an extraor
dinarily brutal conflict which,
had the Indians remained united ana
focused, would likely have meant the
end of the American colonies. A
modern-day equivalent would be a
war that claimed 5 million American
lives. Vietnam, by contrast, killed
fewer than 60,000.
The proclamation’s authors had
recently seen a large portion of the
European population of western and
southeastern Massachusetts - men,
women and children - butchered.
Those were their friends, their rela
tives, sometimes their children. (Of
course, they retaliated with similar
brutalities.) Recalling those circum
stances might go some way to illumi
nating the ‘anti-American Indian’
sentiment of the proclamation, and
maybe lead your readers to a some
what more sophisticated view of his
tory than the infantile ‘white man
bad, Indian good’ sentiment that
seems to be the essence of multicul
turalism.
Happy Thanksgiving, and above
all else, be thankful we’re at peace.
Gerry Harbison
UNL professor
chemistry
Hotel prison?
Maybe another sce
nario should be con
sidered in the punish
ment of murderers.
A prison should be
built with four
bare walls and
iron bars for a door. No heat or any of
the “luxuries” of life. Every day,
twice a day, a bowl of gruel and a
glass of water for the meals. No cable
TV, no library access, no weight
rooms, no phones or college-by-mail
courses. We should make prison just
that - a prison as well as a punish
ment. I agree with Tasha Kuxhausen
(“Life or Death: Death penalty the
best punishment for violent murder
ers in the United States,” Nov. 20) that
murderers (should) lose all rights
once they’re convicted.
And to go along with Cooper
(“Capital punishment must be abol
ished to save taxpayers’ money, con
science,” Nov. 20), to save money,
this bare-bones prison system should
be built. I’m not sure on the actual
amount, but it costs something like
$70,000 a year to house an inmate.
This sounds like an obscenely large
amount. Whether the death penalty is
wrong or not, murderers have no
rights, and they should receive a pun
ishment, not a stay at a resort.
Brian Owens
UNL alumnus
Lincoln