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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 9, 1999)
SPORTS Inside force The front-court game is improving for the Nebraska women’s basketball team, which beat Iowa State 69-68 on Sunday. PAGE 7 I All Steamin’ feet JazzTrain, a new marriage of dance and jazzed up classical music, stops this weekend at the Lied Center. PAGE 9 TUES (AY February 9, 1999 Came the Dawn Partly sunny, high 58. Partly cloudy tonight, low 40. Ryan Soderlin/DN A MAN CRASHED his Bonanza Beechcraft onto the Highlands Golf Course around 7 p.m. last night. The pilot, according to Lincoln Police Capt. David Beggs, suffered only minor injuries. Small plane crashes on golf course Pilot suffers minor injuries after engine goes out at 2,000 feet By Shane Anthony Staff writer A man suffered minor injuries when the sin gle-engine plane he was piloting crashed onto Highlands Public Golf Course about 7:10 p.m. on Monday. John Kennedy, terminal services manager for the Lincoln Airport Authority, said the pilot suffered minor injuries and was transported to BrvanLGH Medical Center West. The pilot took off from the airport and climbed to between 1,500 and 2,000 feet, Kennedy said. He radioed the control tower when the Beechcraft Bonanza 35H had engine trouble, he said, and turned around to come back to the airport. The engine quit, he said, and the plane crashed on the golf course about one-half mile from the airport. Police Capt. Dave Beggs said the pilot - who was the only person on board the plane - was conscious, talking and walking when he left the scene. The crash surprised Don and Dianna Wright, who were out walking Taffy, their brown- and white-haired collie, near Fredstrom Elementary School. 5700 N.W 10th St. Don Wright said he heard the plane’s engine. “It sounded just like a carburetor cutting out,” he said. “1 thought to myself ‘Gee, thal doesn't sound very good. 1 hope we don't have a big crash in a minute”' Not long after that, Dianna Wright said, she heard the plane hit the ground. “It was just more of a loud thud,” she said. Within minutes, the couple saw fire trucks and police cars swarming to the golf course’s front gate at 5501 N.W. 12th St. Dan Williams, head golf professional at Highlands, said he knew nothing of the crash until the lights and sirens interrupted his locking up for the evening. About 175 golfers had taken advantage of unseasonably warm weather, he said. The last group left about 7 p.m., he said, not long before the plane landed, nose down and tail skyward, on the No. 10 green. "It’s normally a pretty safe sport - unless planes come crashing in,” Williams said. Senators advance anti-smoking bill ■ Debate heats up as legislators differ on the amendments’ meanings. By Jessica Fargen Senior staff writer What started as simple debate on banning smoking in the state Capitol ended in nearly two hours of arguments resulting in senators passing a bill that would prohibit smokmg in all state buildings. LB211 was advanced 28-6 in the first round of debate Monday after it was amended to include all state buildings. Senators encouraged each other to come back for the sec ond round of debate with a clearer definition of a state building. As the bill stands now, state buildings could include buildings owned by the state but leased to enti ties such as the University of Nebraska. This includes residence halls and greek houses, where smoking is permitted in certain rooms. Nickerson Sen. Ray Janssen thought it was a smart idea to cleanse the campus residences’ air so fewer young people would smoke. “At the young age of these stu dents, that's where these habits are developing,” he said. After senators passed an amend ment extending the ban to all state buildings, Lincoln Sen. Chris Beutler proposed another amend ment that defined a state building as a building owned by the state, leased by the state or to the state. Beutler s amendment failed by one vote. “No one knows what a state building means,” he said. But Lincoln Sen. David Landis cautioned against broadening LB211 because it strayed from the bill's original intent, and thus lacked public scrutiny. “We’ve gone beyond that to an area we haven’t had a public hearing on,” Landis said of passing a bill for a broader smoking ban. Patients at regional mental health centers and residents of veter ans’ homes would lose their right to smoke inside, he said, because they live in state buildmgs. “I’m not sure we’ve thought those things out well,” Landis said. After the debate, Beutler said he would file his failed amendment again for debate during Select File. “We obviously don’t know as a group what we meant,” Beutler said of the ambiguous “state building.” Please see SMOKE on 6 Education bills split regents, professors By Jessica Fargen Senior staff writer UNK did it 10 years ago. and now may be time for two more state colleges - Wayne State College and Chadron State College - to follow suit and join the ranks of the NU system. That is just a small part of a senes of bills to answer last November’s call by voters for lower spending and to chip away at the current layers of higher education governance in Nebraska, sena tors told the Education Committee Monday. “The current system in the structure of higher education will not survive,” said Speaker Doug Kristensen of Minden who introduced LB631. With LB631, Kristensen wants to merge the NU Board of Regents with the State College Board of Trustees, turn Peru State 66 College mto a com add^Wayne^ and The Chadron to the NU system in the system. s Omaha Sen. structure of Pam Brown has a J similar idea, but higher wants to keep the ^ nu system education will unchanged and merge the two gov- ft <9/ SUWive. eming boards under ***'■ ,, Doug Kristensen Both bills would j , , ... , Minden senator create a higher edu cation governing board with both appointed and elected members and eliminate the Coordinating Commission for Post-Secondary Education. To restructure higher education governance, voters must also approve constitutional amendments that accompany the bills. The Education Committee took no action on the bills Monday after more than four hours of debate. A merger with the NU system would bring a better bargaining tool for state colleges to recruit top faculty, enhance job opportunities for gradu ates and eliminate labels and tags that state col leges are not up to par with their university brethren, Kristensen said. But UNL English Professor Robert Haller, speaking on behalf of the American Association of University Professors, said he “conditionally opposed” the bills because the mission of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln could be in jeop ardy. The university is a research institution with programs such as a Dental College and a Law College. Those professional programs do not mesh well with the goals of state colleges, which are less centered on research and graduate pro Please see COLLEGE on 6 Read the Daily Nebraskan on the World Wide Web at dailyneb.com