God Squad
Choosing battles makes for greater success in conversions
A.L. FORKNER is a junior
news-editorial major and a
Daily Nebraskan colum
nist
I had the opportunity to have my
soul saved Friday night.
Unfortunately, I was too close to
the head of the line at Iguana’s to give
up my spot.
There I was, freezing my bojimbies
off in line, silently cursing the fire mar
shal. OK, maybe it wasn’t that silently.
The girls who were with me ran
into some guy friends of theirs and
were cuddling for warmth. Me, being a
guy, elected not to cuddle. (No offense,
guys, y’all just weren’t my type.) Then,
from die back of the line, I heard a
booming voice. I turned to see an ordi
nary-looking man standing on a con
crete bench, Bible clasped firmly in his
mittened hand.
I couldn’t make out much of what
he was saying. All I could tell was that
he was trying to rhyme each verse -
sort of a Dr. Seuss meets Jerry Falwell.
No, maybe it was a Busta Rhymes
meets Billy Graham....
I digress.
It wasn’t long before the crowd of
freezing drunks began to heckle the
man.
I still couldn’t hear his words, but
I could see his lace, and it was not a
happy look.
This set my mind to wandering. ,
Well, it was wandering more /
than usual. I wondered why he (4, ,;
was getting mad. Was he that
clueless?
Did he honestly expect to get up in
front of a group of drunk college stu
dents (and one sober columnist),
preach about the evils of drink and not
expect to be ridiculed?
Personally, I’m not a deeply reli
gious man. Nor, con
trary to popular belief,
am I a total jerk- wad. I
felt bad for the guy.
I felt bad,
not for
Jb Sure,
missionaries have had a tough
w' time converting people in the past.
Let’s face it, if you’re set in your ways
it’s going to be tough to change. That
applies to putting sugar in your coffee
as well as sacrificing virgins to appease
the volcano gods. What were his inten
tions? I know that seems obvious, but
think it through.
Was his goal to get people to get
out of line and say, “I have seen the
evils of alcohol. Sir, I have heard your
words and want to be forgiven. Please,
show the one, true path to heaven”?
Talk about your tough crowds.
Or, was he trying to
piss people off? To be fair,
I can find no logical reason
for it. Then again, I can’t
find any logical reason that
^ brunette from my poli sci class
f l won’t go to dinner with me.
\j As I got closer and closer to the
I front of the line, I thought more and
j more about the soapbox preacher
/ behind me.
/ I was disturbed by the expression
f on his face as he absorbed the slings
A and arrows of the drunken crowd’s
J wit.
Granted, most of the shouts were
pretty damn dumb. But, there were a
few that would’ve made Ned Flanders
crack a smile. (My personal favorite
was, “Hey man! Turn some water into
wine, I’m sobering up out here.”)
It brought to mind the faces of the
religious “fanatics” I often see in wire
photos chanting, “Death to America.”
The thought chilled my bones even
more than the stiff wind that
cut through my cotton
shirt.
What was his
deal?
I wanted to
ask him if his
method had
ever worked. I was
dying to know if he had
i even once convinced someone to
get out of line and testify to the evils
ofliquor.
Some how, I just didn’t see it hap
pening.
It’s people like that who piss me off.
When I was in high school, I
worked with such a girl. She was very
intelligent and beautiful. I had
planned on asking her
out sometime.
However,
I hap
pened to mention to a co-worker that I
was stopping at a nationwide depart
ment store.
You would’ve thought I’d said I was
going to stop and club a few seals on
the way to the book-burning.
She preached me up one side and
down the other about the evils of that
certain chain. It donates money to this,
which means it supports that, therefore
it is evil.
Now, before you start cranking out
your letters telling me how boycotts
and such work, let me tell you some
thing.
Don’t preach to me. Ever.
Don’t condemn me to Hell I
because I buy my boxer I
shorts at a store that ^
gives money to a cer- \
tain cause.
Don’t throw blood
on me because I wear a
leather jacket and like
to eat meat.
And never,
ever lump me in
with all the
slack
jawed, testosterone-oozing sexist pigs
because I find Sheryl Crow to be
attractive without actually knowing
what she’s like.
Now then, if you do that for me,
here’s what I’ll do for you.
I won’t beat you over the head with
my opinions on abortion, animal rights,
vegetarians, gun control, the environ
ment, diet colas, the designated hitter
or how much wood I think a wood
chuck could chuck if a woodchuck
could chuck wood.
Deal?
Picture of generosity
NU Athletic Department s ‘greedy image'proves unfair judgment
Editor's note: Each Tuesday this
semester, the Daily Nebraskan will
print an opinion column from a
guest columnist. Each works at the
University of Nebraska or is
involved with an issue that affects
our campus or our students.
JAMES GRIESEN is the
vice chancellor for student
affairs at the University of
Nebraska-Lincolru
The DN editorial “Share the
Wealth” (3/25), reminded me that the
student body at any university has an
institutional memory of only a few
years. So it is understandable that stu
dents may not be aware ofhow generous
the NU Athletic Department has been,
and continues to be, to all enrolled stu
dents.
Not only is NU among a handful of
Division I schools that provide no gen
eral university funding and no student
fee support for intercollegiate athletics,
our entire student population has also
benefited greatly from intercollegiate
athletic successes.
I speak mainly of the Campus
Recreation Center that was built
between 1987 and 1991 entirely from
Athletic Department resources - $14.9
million to be exact.
In 1986-87, the indoor facilities
available for students to engage in recre
ation and fitness activities were
deplorable. The Men’s Physical
Education Building was basically a
large Quonset hut that had been relocat
ed to the campus from the Lincoln air
base after World War n.
The Coliseum was generally an
uninviting place. Its swimming pool had
been closed by the department ofhealth;
the basketball floor was badly in need of
replacement and the locker rooms were
inadequate and grossly out-of-date.
When Bob Devaney and Tom
Osborne approached then-Chancellor
Martin Massengale that year with a plan
to build a new indoor practice facility
for football and other intercollegiate
sports, Martin challenged diem to build
a recreation center to serve all students.
Although it meant considerable
debt for the Athletic Department, Bob
and Tom agreed to take up the chal
lenge. While most of the debt has been
paid off by now, the Athletic
Department still pays $100,000 annual
ly for debt service on the Campus
Recreation Center.
Of die $ 14.9 million expended, only
a small portion benefited intercollegiate
athletics, which uses intercollegiate vol
leyball facilities in the Coliseum and
just 25 percent of time available in die
Cook Pavilion. Any member of the
Campus Recreation Center can use
Cook Pavilion during the remaining
time, as well as all other center facilities.
Because of the Athletic
Department’s gift, our general student
recreation facilities now rank among the
best in the nation. We are constantly
hosting visitors horn other schools who
want to study our facilities as they plan
improvements for their campuses. (A
delegation from the University of
Oklahoma is visiting this week.)
In addition to the Campus
Recreation Center, the Athletic
Department has donated:
■ $300,000 from spring football
game proceeds to the library.
■ a $110,000 rifle range, which h
built for intercollegiate, intramural,
ROTC and other student uses.
■ about $350,000 annually on uni
forms, travel expense and scholarships
for the Comhusker marching band and
yell squad.
Intercollegiate athletes have gener
ated more than $185,000 for the general
scholarship fund since 1980 through
recognition they have received.
And the Athletic Department does
many other generous deeds throughout
the year for the general good of the cam
pus. It co-sponsors major speakers,
opens its staff development programs to
personnel from other departments and
builds student recruitment and general
NU promotional spots into broadcast
ing contracts, to name just a few.
If the DN editorial is correct in
claiming thru “the Athletic Department
has a greedy image around campus,” I
suggest that we all should make a sin
cere effort to set the record straight
Without the generosity of the
Athletic Department, students today
and for many years to come would be
paying about $30 more in student fees
each semester to cover debt service on
the Campus Recreation Center. They
would also find fewer books and jour
nals than they need in the library, and the
campus would be a less exciting place in
general.
We should be as proud and appre
ciative of the contributions made to
our university by our Athletic
Department to as we are of the
accomplishments of our sports teams.
I*:S m ..iL. -
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