Plans under way for
Lincoln skate park
Parents, skateboarders hope for funding
By Jason Hardy
Staff writer
When Lincoln Police officers
find people skateboarding in the
downtown area, they usually send
them away by means of a warning
ticket, a fine or an escort. On the
way out of the area, the officers let
the criminals know they were in
one of the places where skate
boarding is prohibited. !
Still, one question remains:
Where can they skate?
For that question, the police -
or anyone else for that matter -
have no answer.
But at today’s meeting for the
Lincoln Park Board, the question
might finally be answered.
The Lincoln Rollerpark
Association, a group of more than
400 local skateboarders, in-line
skaters, parents, business people
and other concerned citizens, hope
the board will approve its plan to
build a public skate park at Van
Dorn Park, 9th and Van Dorn
streets.
Barbara Micek, co-chair
woman of the Lincoln Rollerpark
Association, said she was confi
dent the park board would pass the
nroDosal.
“What the park board wanted
us to do was come up with a plan
and design for Van Dorn Park, and
that’s what the architects have
done,” Micek said. “What we’re
presenting to them is what they
wanted to see, so I can’t imagine
that it wouldn’t be approved.”
Providing the park board
approves the plan, the next step is a
neighborhood meeting to notify
area residents of the project After
that, it goes before the City
Council for the final say.
The proposed 22,500-square
v foot skate park blueprints were
designed by the Lincoln architec
tural firm of Bahr, Vermeer &
Haecker and feature numerous
state-of-the-art ramps, bowls and
even a street course.
The skate park comes with an
estimated price tag of $225,000,
which the Lincoln Rollerpark
Association, a nonprofit organiza
tion, is expected to raise through
donations. Micek, however, hopes
the Lincoln City Council will help
with at least some of the cost.
“The city council would like to
see us raise that money on our own,
but we’re hoping they’ll match
some of our money when they see
the kind of revenue that can be
generated,” Micek said. “We
haven’t had the opportunity to dis
cuss it with them, but we’ve gotten
feedback that leads us to think
I
«
Its great that we
have a lot of
baseball diamonds,
but not every kid
likes baseball.”
Barbara Micek
co-chairwoman of Lincoln
Rollerpark Association
they’ll be very supportive.”
Phil Burcher, co-founder of the
Lincoln Rollerpark Association
and owner of Precision
Skateboards, said he was confident
the group could raise the money.
“I feel really positive about it,”
Burcher said. “We have a lot of
plans coming up and the kids are
even out there with their little cans
raising money. It’s just great
because stuff is finally happen
ing.”
For Burcher, this park has been
a 13-year vision in the making - a
vision that has persisted despite
being bogged down with bureau
cratic red tape and organizational
problems.
He said for the most part any
opposition to the skate park was
founded on confusion rather than
factual problems with the project
“I think the No. 1 tiling is a lack
of understanding of what a skate
park is and what it can provide for
the city,” he said. “As long as we’re
legitimate there really is no reason
for them to say no. It really is a pos
itive thing.”
Micek said a skate park would
not only give skateboarders and in
line skaters a legal place to ride,
but it would also bring parents and
families from surrounding towns
and communities into Lincoln, in
turn generating revenue at local
stores and restaurants.
To Micek, whose son is a
skateboarder, the most important
reason for this skate park is the
people who will use it.
“I think it’s important to recog
nize that all kids don’t choose to
recreate in the same way. It’s great
that we have a lot of baseball dia
monds, but not every kid likes
baseball,” Micek said.
“I think our kids deserve to
have a safe and exciting place to
skateboard and in-line skate. We
don’t expect kids who play basket
ball to play in the street, so why
don’t we help kids that skate?
“The need is there and now the
city just needs to recognize that.”
--
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I
Peace negotiations fail;
Kosovo fighting escalates
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) -
A top U.S. negotiator failed to per
suade Yugoslavia’s president to sign
onto a new Kosovo peace deal
Wednesday. Along the border,
Yugoslav forces backed by tanks
torched the homes of ethnic Albanians
and sent hundreds fleeing.
Following eight hours of talks,
American envoy Richard Holbrooke
said there had been “no change” in
President Slobodan Milosevic’s oppo
sition to the Kosovo peace plan.
Holbrooke planned to return to
Washington today to brief the Clinton
administration.
“We had very engaged, very
intense talks today,” Holbrooke said,
including “every aspect of the situa
tion in Kosovo.”
On the ground in Kosovo, the U.N.
refugee agency said it had reports of at
least four villages burning in the hills
and hundreds of ethnic Albanians flee
ing the border area - 4,000 over the
past week.
Three bodies were found - at least
two of them men who had been shot in
the back in Ivaja, a hamlet near the
Macedonia border where homes
burned by Yugoslav troops still smol
dered.
Residents said neither man was a
rebel in the separatist Kosovo
Liberation Array. The identity of the
third victim was not clear.
One of the victims had called on a
mobile phone to say that Serb police
were coming into the village and that
residents were fleeing, a neighbor
said.
More than 2,000 people have died
and 300,000 have been displaced in a
year of fighting between Yugoslav
troops and ethnic Albanian rebels in
Kosovo.
Milosevic said the U.S.-sponsored
peace plan is “a good basis” for a polit
ical settlement of the Kosovo crisis.
But he continued to reject the key pro
vision - the deployment of NATO
troops to police it
His government-run television
denounced “aggressive” U.S. policies
and called for the defense of Kosovo.
During the 10-minute program appar
ently aimed at preparing Serbs for an
armed showdown with the West, a
Yugoslav army officer declared “die
defense of Kosovo has no price” and
that Yugoslavia “must deal with
domestic traitors who say we cannot
fight against the whole world.”
The U.S-sponsored deal calls for
wide autonomy for Kosovo Albanians
but not the independence that they
seek, and for 28,000 NATO troops -
including 4,000Americans - to police
a settlement
Milosevic believes stationing
NATO forces is tantamount to Western
intervention in Yugoslavia, made up of
Serbia and the much-smaller
Montenegro. Kosovo is a Serbian
province, but 90 percent of its 2 mil
lion people are ethnic Albanian.
Holbrooke had been instrumental
in forging a Bosnia peace deal with
Milosevic in 1995 and a shaky cease
fire in Kosovo last October that has
unraveled with new fighting this year.
But this plan was even in trouble
with Kosovo Albanians, who were
apparently backsliding on their pledge
to sign the deal. A KLA representative
in London, Pleurat Sejdiu, said the
rebels would “not sign up while the
war is going on in Kosovo.”
The plan also requires the rebels to
disarm, a serious obstacle for the
secessionist-minded guerrillas.
Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright and former Sen. Bob Dole on
Wednesday asked Kosovo’s ethnic
Albanians to press their leaders to sign
the plan.
Lake: Action is key in Yugoslavia
By Brian Carlson
Staffwriter ■
Although the crisis in Kosovo
offers no easy solutions, the United
States should be closely engaged in
the situation now rather than face
greater challenges down the road,
Anthony Lake said this week.
Lake, national security adviser to
President Clinton from 1993 to 1996,
was in Lincoln on Tuesday to deliver a
lecture for the E.N. Thompson Forum
on World Issues.
In an interview, he said the Clinton
administration must explain that a
strong U.S. commitment to peace in
Kosovo promotes both humanitarian
and U.S. national interests.
“We have important interests in
the region,” he said. “Obviously we
have vital interests in Europe as a
whole. Unhappily, it has proven
impossible for die Europeans them
selves to handle the situation.”
Unfortunately, Lake said, the
seemingly irreconcilable differences
between the warring parties make it
difficult to bring peace to the region.
Kosovo is a small province in
Serbia populated mostly by ethnic
Albanians, known as Kosovars. The
Kosovo Liberation Army, representing
the ethnic Albanians, wants indepen
dence. The Serbian government, led
by Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic, has suppressed the KLA
insurgency, resulting in several mas
sacres of civilians.
The United States and several
European countries now are attempt
ing to broker an agreement that would
grant self-rule to Kosovo, with a possi
bility of independence in the future.
President Clinton has proposed
that the United States contribute 4,000
troops to a NATO peacekeeping force
in Kosovo, provided an agreement is
reached.
The deal currently is on hold, with
Milosevic refusing to accept NATO
troops on Serbian territory. KLA sup
port for the plan also appears tenuous.
Lake said the current proposal
offers Kosovo the possibility of
Western support for independence,
while giving Serbia another chance to
prove it can govern all its territory fair
ly.
But the proposal’s slim prospects
of success require the United States to
consider other options, Lake said. At
some point, when a country such as
Serbia shows enough irresponsibility
in internal governance, it forfeits its
right to sovereignty over its current
territory.
“In the end, if neither the Serbs nor
the Kosovars accept this deal - which I
suspect will happen - then we are
going to have to find a way to put inde
pendence on the table,” he said.
It makes no sense, Lake said, for
the West to send troops to keep a coun
try together if its national differences
prevent such an arrangement.
“I don’t mean to imply for a sec
ond, though, that there’s an easy solu
tion,” he said
However the crisis is ultimately
settled, the United States has national
interests in the Balkans, Lake said.
Noting that World War I began in
the Balkans, Lake said the Kosovo cri
sis, if unchecked, could escalate and
spread into neighboring countries
such as Albania, Macedonia and
NATO members Greece and Turkey.
While in the Clinton administra
tion, Lake helped coordinate policy on
Bosnia, another site of ethnic warfare
in the Balkans. After four years of war
fare there, the warring parties struck a
peace agreement that has been suc
cessfully enforced by a NATO force
that includes U.S. troops.
If the West is to achieve and pre
serve peace in Kosovo as it has in
Bosnia, Lake said, a peacekeeping
operation must combine military
enforcement with democratic reforms,
including elections, economic reforms
and the establishment of police forces.
The challenge, he said, is to devel
op a peacekeeping strategy that does
not require U.S. troops to remain
indefinitely. For example, one col
league told Lake he thought a peace
keeping operation in Kosovo would
require a 50-year commitment
That would be both wrong and
politically impossible, Lake said.
“The key to our ability to pursue
an endgame is to combine military
operations with effective civilian
structures.”
APU attends black leadership conference
By Veronica Daehn
Staff writer
Members of UNL’s Afrikan
People’s Union came away from the
22n“ Annual Big 12 Conference on
Black Student Government with some
new ideas for promoting black leader
ship on campus.
“The Awakening: Reviving the
Struggle” was the theme for this year’s
event, held in February at the
University of Colorado in Boulder.
About 35 University of Nebraska
Lincoln students, staff and faculty
members attended.
APU President Kenny Bailey said
die conference, which was designed to
give black students from predominantly
white campuses the chance to interact
with other black students, provided
ideas on what campus leaders could do
to promote participation among black
students.
“We talked about the importance of
graduating and retaining colored stu
dents at white campuses,” Bailey said.
“Sometimes we build up numbers and
then students transfer to another
school.”
N. Omar Valentine, UNL’s Big 12
coordinator, agreed that the conference
was beneficial.
He said learning how students get
along at other schools in the conference
was inspiring.
“We have a small African
American population,” Valentine said.
“A sense of family and unity is lacking
here.”
The conference was good for com
munication, Valentine said.
The two workshops he was able to
attend and the topic of the speaker he
heard were oriented toward issues other
Big 12 schools are facing, he said.
“We were able to see how they dealt
with problems, and there were a lot of
ideas,” he said.
Out of the estimated 1,000 people
who attended the conference, Bailey
received the Alvin Alley Award for Arts
and Entertainment.
This is the second year a UNL stu
dent has won the award, Bailey said. ;
Bailey received the award in part for
the work he’s done on his show “Groove
Sessions” on the campus radio station
KRNU-FM (90.3). He began the show
as a showcase for urban music.
Bailey also was recognized for
writing a play titled “Strange
Relationship” that he hopes to see pro
duced by the end of the year.
“He helped Nebraska provide
entertainment for African Americans,”
Valentine said.
Hie conference workshops helped
provide ideas to promote student
involvement, Valentine said.
“Certain things need to be done to
revive interest,” he said. “The work
shops inspired a lot of students from
Nebraska.” '
