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
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