Plans for honors hall adapted LINK from page 1 hall. Maintenance workers could work in both Selleck and the Kauffman Center, he said. Regent Charles Wilson of Lincoln said the tunnel was a posi tive addition to the hail, which was scheduled to be finished in 2001. “We have everything to gain and nothing to lose,” Wilson said. The $400,000 tunnel will be funded with money donated by Carole and C. Edward McVaney, UNL alumni, who gave $32 million for the honors hall and program. NU President Dennis Smith said the donors were contacted, and they wanted the money spent in this way. At their Saturday meeting, the regents also discussed an annual gender-equity report presented by the universitywide committee on gender equity. Child care dominated the dis cussion after a representative from each NU campus presented steps made toward equity on their cam puses. The report updates the regents on seven gender-equity goals set by the board in 1991. The University of Nebraska at Omaha was commended for its child care facilities in the equity report. The report said that in the center’s last survey, 95 percent of its users were “very satisfied.” Other campuses are taking steps to improve the availability and accessibility of their care facilities. UNL, for example, is looking to increase contact with private child care facilities near campus to increase accessibility to faculty members, staff and students, said Nancy Mitchell, a gender equity committee member and UNL advertising professor. Ninety-five spots exist at the UNL child care facility, which is run by the Nebraska Union. In other regents business: ■ The board voted to strike the proposed tenure termination of UNL Associate English Professor Bruce Erlich from its agenda. Erlich submitted a letter of res ignation Thursday, which the uni versity has accepted. He will retire from his position at the end of February. Erlich, who had worked for the university since 1973, taught pri marily comparative literature cours es in the English department and German literature in the modern languages department. Officials did not disclose rea sons for the proposed tenure termi nation. ■ The board approved a $2.2 million proposal to replace UNL’s outdoor track. The project will include adding a new sub-base to the track; improv ing the infield; relocating the throw ing, jumping and other related events; and improving the electrical and timing capabilities. Joe Selig, associate athletic director, told the regents no home track meets were held in the last year because of the condition of the track. “It’s hard to have a track pro gram without a track, and that’s about where we’re at right now.” Your roommate snores. Your biochemistry syllabus is 8 pages long. You get 5 free hours of online time every month with Navbc (Hey, at least there’s something to smile about.) Happy news! If you're a UNL student, faculty or staff member, you get 5 free hours of Internet access every month when you sign up for one of these Navix plans: Low Usage Plan: Get 15 hours of online time for just $6.50 a month. Medium Usage Plan: Get 40 hours of online time for just $10.00 a month. High Usage Plan: Get 250 hours of online time for just $19.50 a mopth. Additional minutes for each plan are just $.02 and activation is free! And if you keep your usage for that month under 5 hours, your service for that month is also free! Navix is fast, easy and reliable, letting you go online at speeds up to 56kps. There’s a local Help Desk and even an 888 access number to use when you travel. Call University Telecommunications at 472-5151 (students) or 472-3434 (faculty or staff). _ Or, stop by 211 Nebraska Hall. ilUIIA(S laiaraat lartitte navix.net Aliant Communications* Making It eaaler to communicate."1 | You mutt be i UNL student faculty or rtaff numb* to qmWy tor thtu ptom. Hcttopt wftwtrt is MtotM in Window md Macintosh union. Operators handle bizarre questions OPERATORS from page 1 schedule of events on campus that week. If asked, they can also attempt to find the phone number of male strip pers in town or the type of hot dogs served at NU home football games. Operators handle about 6,000 calls a day; 8,000 when there’s bad weather. The information bank they provide has more than 300,000 residences and businesses. Bruce Bemt, manager of opera tor services, said the service coming out of Nebraska Hall was out of the ordinary. “This is one of the few switch boards at universities that provide as much service as we do,” Bemt said. “I would consider this not a switch board, but an information center.” Colleen Huls, die day supervisor, has worked in the department for 16 years. She said people would be sur prised at the range of questions oper ators have answered. “A lot of times they start out, ‘This is a really dumb question,”’ she said. “And you want to say, ‘I’ve had a lot dumber.’” Here is a collection of the oddest questions operators said they had been asked: ■ How to tell when a piece of chicken is My cooked. ■ What channel the television show “Friends” is on. ■ How to get former NU Football Coach Tom Osborne on the phone as he coached on the sidelines. ■ How to jump a dead battery. ■ How ADDS is transmitted. ■ Where O Street is located. ■ If a chicken has a wishbone. Two non-students work from midnight to 8 a.m. Most of the time four to eight people are working. Students usually work the 4 p.m. until-late evening shift. Came Knievel, a senior speech pathology major, has been working as a phone operator at UNL for 2 lA years. Her brother, Jeff, has been working there for 1 Vi years. “I don’t know why, but some thing about it has always sounded interesting,” she said. “You don’t know the face with the voice on the other line.” Knievel said callers got pretty emotional when they heard school was off for the day, such as during October 1997’s snowstorm. “‘Oh, I love you, man,’ students have told me when they hear that we are not having school,” she said. Annie Greer, who has been a UNL operator for 12 years, said stu dents often jumped the gun when it snowed. “Even if we have a little snow, they think that they are going to close the college,” Greer said. Before UNL, Greer was an oper ator for the state capitol. Instead of computers, they used books, she 66 A lot of times they start out, This is a really dumb question!And you want to say, ‘I’ve had a lot dumber! ” Colleen Huls Switchboard supervisor said. It was the closest thing to the old-fashioned telephone operators most people think of. Knievel’s brother, Jeff, a junior sociology major, had conjured up the same vision of operators. “I thought I’d be working with a bunch of old ladies,” he said. Jeff said he liked the laid-back atmosphere of his job, which is why he said he planned on sticking with it until graduation. When he works on weekends or Friday nights, a lot of drunk students partake in a little drinking and dial ing. Sometimes they want the phone number for the closest pizza place or the phone number of someone they had just met. His biggest pet peeve is rude callers. “You try to be as kind as you can,” Jeff said of rude callers, “then you rip them when you get off the phone.” Greer said the phone operators were trained to be nice. And they are, even when people are rude. “Sir, you don’t need to talk to us like that,” was how Greer said she dealt with rude calls. Rudeness can entail callers tak ing a condescending tone with oper ators, Huls said. “There’s a tendency sometimes to think we’re not intelligent people,” Huls said. “Sometimes we have peo ple talking down to us.” Besides providing information, Huls said she had learned a lot through instructing people on where to go. “There’s a lot of information to know, and you learn a lot in a job like this,” Huls said. “You know a lot of what you need to know to get a job done.” Adam Coulter, a junior broad casting major, has been an operator for 2 years. Like most of the other operators, he just wants people to realize that the voice on the other end of the line is more than a voice. “Most people don’t realize that there’s so much information here,” he said. “I don’t think they realize how much we do.” Union renovations offer expanded game room GAME from page 1 planned to broadcast cable sports networks, will be added as well, he said. Traditional board games, including chess and checkers, also will be available. “We will be willing to try any thing that the student might want to do,” Buysman said. Daryl Swanson, Nebraska Unions director, said the union had been without a recreation room for about two years. Swanson said the union had always had a large recreation room, and in 1959 included a 10 lane bowling alley in the base ment. In 1985, the alley was tom out to expand the bookstore. A small billiard room was opened in the south part of the basement, which was made into the Daily Nebraskan offices two years ago. Swanson said after the com pletion of the union’s new addi tion, if was decided to bring back recreation services to the build ing. The new recreation room is open daily from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.