Olmos speaks on
relations, unity
■ The actor adressed the
importance of communica
tion among races.
By Veronica Daehn
Staff writer
If you book him, they will come.
Actor Edward James Olmos - best
known for his stint on the pastel-laden
television cop drama “Miami Vice” -
nearly filled the Centennial Ballroom
in the Nebraska Union on Thursday
night.
Students, professors and communi
ty members came to see the man they
know mostly from the big screen talk
about the impotence of racial and eth
nic harmony.
Olmos has also starred in the
Warner Brothers motion picture
“Selena” last year, as well as “Stand
and Deliver,” which he also directed.
“The only thing that makes us the
same is that we’re all different,” Olmos
said.
Education is the key to stopping the
hate and prejudice that is evident in
today’s society, he said.
“Race is die issue,” he said. “Why?
Because we made it the issue.”
In a speech filled with humor and
personal anecdotes, Olmos analyzed
his Chicano background and focused
on what American institutions, such as
schools, need to do to stop the hate and
misunderstanding.
Ninety-three percent of the curricu
lum children are taught in school is
European-American, he said.
“Africans got (to the United States)
long before Columbus did,” Olmos
said. “Try to find that in the history
books.”
Education is very important, and
the nation’s language should not be lim
ited to English only, he said.
“There’s never been more hurt to
this country than those two words
-English only,” Olmos said. “Being
monolinguistic is like not knowing how
to use a computer.”
Olmos said being able to speak
more than one language continues to
become more important in today’s soci
ety.
With the Internet gaining populari
ty, Olmos said, it should be used to
communicate with people from across
the world.
“Even governments can’t stop you
from talking to each other on there,” he
said. “Get on the ’Net and talk.”
Olmos emphasized that hate was
not innate. It is acquired as people inter
act with their environment, and it
should not be that way, he said.
“We learned how to be racist,” he
said. “We learned how to be angry at
each other. We learned how to be opin
ionated. We learned how to be stereo
typical.”
The solution now is education, he
said. People need to realize that on
average they only use 8 percent of their
brain, while the rest sits idle.
“We know nothing about the sub
conscious mind,” he said. “Those of us
that are lucky enough to make it past
the hatred of white people, hate white
people subconsciously.”
People are not the same, Olmos
said, but an understanding needs to be
reached.
“Every single person is different.
The only thing that makes you the same
is you’re a human being. There’s only
one race and it’s the human race.”
Law college seeks end
to hair-length dilemna
By Ieva Augstums
Senior staff writer
NU College of Law administrators
and professors plan to tangle them
selves again in one student’s “hairy
issue,” in hope of ending a three
month discrimination discrepancy.
University of Nebraska College of
Law Dean Nancy Rapoport said third
year NU law student Thayne Glenn’s
case will be discussed again at today’s
faculty meeting.
Glenn was told in January he
could not participate in the Criminal
Clinic offered through Lancaster
County Attorney Gary Lacey’s office
unless he cut a substantial part of his
shoulder-length hair.
After being approached by Glenn,
Law Professor John Snowden ques
tioned whether students could be dis
criminated against based on their
appearance.
Snowden, along with four other
NU law professors, said he would be
presenting a motion at this afternoon’s
meeting to resolve the issue.
“We are asking the law school to
affirm that it honors the non-discrimi
nation policy of the university,”
Snowden said. “And that policy does
include hair.”
A faculty meeting was held
February 9 to discuss the issue; how
ever, nothing was resolved.
In addition to the college’s compli
ance, Snowden said the motion also
requests all programs the college
associates itself with to honor the pol
icy.
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Clinton holds Milosevic
responsible for soldiers
WASHINGTON (AP) - President
Clinton said Thursday he holds
Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic responsible for the capture
of three Army soldiers near the
Macedonian-Yugoslav border, warn
ing him to “make no mistake” and
release them immediately.
The United States initially brand
ed the capture an illegal abduction on
the assumption that Serb forces had
crossed into Macedonia. But later
Thursday, Pentagon spokesman
Kenneth Bacon called them “prison
ers of war,” raising the specter that the
soldiers could be held until the end of
hostilities. The Pentagon was investi
gating the possibility that the soldiers
had blundered across the Macedonian
border into Yugoslavia.
“We consider them to be POWs,”
Bacon said. “We assert that they are
covered by the Geneva Convention.”
Yugoslavia said the soldiers were
invaders and would face criminal trial
before a military court today. The
announcement added a new and
unsettling element to an expanding
Balkan conflict that the Clinton
administration struggled Thursday to
explain.
Mixed with image$)of Kosovar
Albanian refugees fleeing from appar
ent Yugoslav “ethnic cleansing” oper
ations were television pictures appar
ently from Pristina, the Kosovar
provincial capital, showing the three
grim-faced American soldiers in cap
tivity, dressed in camouflage, with dirt
or abrasions on their faces.
“The United States takes care of
its own,” Clinton said to emotional
applause from service members gath
ered in a hangar at Norfolk Naval Base
in Virginia. “President Milosevic
should make no mistake: We will hold
him and his government responsible
for their safety and their well-being.”
The Pentagon backed away from
its initial assertion that the soldiers
had not crossed into Yugoslav territo
ry. Army Gen. Henry Shelton, chair
man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said
that possibility was now being investi
gated, and he suggested that the three
may have inadvertently crossed the
border while fleeing from a Serb
ambush. But the Clinton administra
tion maintained that the capture of the
soldiers was illegal.
“There was absolutely no basis for
them to be taken,” Clinton said.
“There is no basis for them to be held.
There is certainly no basis for them to
be tried.”
Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister
Vuk Draskovic, a moderate in the
Yugoslav government, told The
Associated Press that the soldiers,
who were caught Wednesday, would
be treated “with the full respect of all
international conventions concerning
prisoners of war.”
The Pentagon identified the three
as Staff Sgt. Andrew A. Ramirez, 24,
of Los Angeles; Staff Sgt. Christopher
J. Stone, 25, of Smiths Creek, Mich.;
and Spc. Steven M. Gonzales, 21, of
Huntsville, Texas. The men had been
on a routine reconnaissance mission
in the Kumanov area of northern
Macedonia, about three miles from
«
There was
absolutely no basis
for them to be
taken. There is no
basis for them to be
held.”
President Clinton
the southern Yugoslav border, when
they radioed frantically at about 3 p.m.
(8 a.m. EST) that they were taking
small arms fire and then that they were
surrounded. Nothing further was
heard from the patrol. The Pentagon
kept the situation secret until
Wednesday evening after U.S. search
and-rescue helicopter teams had
failed to find the soldiers.
Draskovic said the wounds clearly
visible on one soldier resulted from
his “trying to fight physically before
being arrested.” But U.S. officials
voiced concern. j
“We’re very concerned about the
safety and welfare of the three soldiers
who were abducted by Serb forces,”
U.S. Army Gen. Wesley Clark, the
NATO commander, said at a news
conference in Brussels, Belgium. j
“We’ve all seen their pictures. We
don’t like it. We don’t like the way
they’re treated, and we have a long
memory about these kinds of things.”
RHA names election winners
By Bernard Vogelsang
Staff writer
RHA Election Commissioner
Kristy Jacobberger said Thursday all
candidates who successfully ran in
Wednesday’s election accepted their
senate positions.
Jacobberger said nine of the 30
seats in the Residence Hall
Association Senate will remain
unfilled because write-in candidates
didn’t receive the electoral threshold
of five votes to fill these spots.
Residence halls who have senator
positions open are Abel, Cather,
Sandoz, Schramm and Smith.
Residence Hall Association
President-elect Jadd Stevens will give
up his position as representative for
the residence halls in the Committee
for Fees Allocation.
Stevens said that according to the
RHA constitution, he is not allowed
to hold two elected offices.
The following students were
elected Wednesday:
RHA executive board: Jadd
Stevens, president; Liz Ormsby, vice
president; Jason Ball, treasurer; Aja
Bowling, secretary.
Abel: Rebecca Overgaard, presi
dent; Matt Knobbe, senator.
Burr/Fedde: Megan Meyer, presi
dent; Ethan Joy, senator.
Cather: Tiffany Quinze, president.
Harper: Daniel Becic, president;
David Lockwood and Chris Vario,
senators.
Neihardt: Mike Butterfield, presi
dent; Ben Miriovsky and Luke
Schreier, senators.
Pound: Andy Wigton, president;
Brian Arnold, senator.
Sandoz: Lynn Kratky, president.
Schramm: Jason Ryan, president;
Mari Walsh, senator.
Selleck: Mandy Smith, president;
Mike Kwon and Shaun Jlahi, sena
tors.
Smith: Melanie Mitzel, president;
Desiree Walsh, senator.
Campus catches kickboxing craze
KICK from page 1
increasingly popular this year.
But despite the fancy infomer
cials and personal testimonies that
seem to signal a trend, Robinson said
the program that combines martial
arts, boxing and aerobics is going to
be around for a while.
“It’s becoming more mainstream
than a trend,” Robinson said, “It’s
becoming an integral part of many
fitness programs.”
While combining kickboxing
with an aerobic component has seen
the peak of its popularity in the last
couple of years, it’s not new, said
Frank Thiboutot, creator of a pro
gram called CardioKickboxing.
After being involved in the sport
of kickboxing, Thiboutot said he
started promoting kickboxing for fit
ness seven or eight years ago to make
the sport more well-known.
During the last couple of years,
his program has taken off, Thiboutot
said. He attributes it to the increased
awareness of the benefits that kick
boxing provides.
“So many people are getting
hooked on it,” Thiboutot said. “They
like kicking and punching the bags.”
While CardioKickboxing uses
equipment, the classes at campus rec
aren’t equipment intensive.
Robinson said participants still get
benefits even though there aren’t
bags to punch on or shields to hold.
“Along with the cardiovascular
and muscular endurance, it makes
people feel confident in their physi
cal presence and balance,” Robinson
said. “That is something that is
important in physical fitness.”
Robinson said campus rec hopes
to add more classes or move Kick
Boxing Express to a bigger area so
that equipment such as ropes and
shields can be used.
With or without equipment,
Thiboutot said, the classes and
videos tend to be popular with
women because they traditionally
haven’t participated in kickboxing
before.
“What I’ve found over the years
is that women really like it because
it’s something they historically
haven’t done.”
The kickboxing class at UNL
. ' - i • t * * • *5 C. T V* . C i J # * '* ,1 . -
doesn’t limit itself to one gender,
however. Robinson said that while
aerobics classes tend to be dominated
by a female presence, the class has
attracted men, too.
With the onslaught of kickboxing
programs such as Tae-Bo and
CardioKickboxing, Jean Walcher,
from the American Council on
Exercise, said that it was important to
make sure each program was legiti
mate and safe.
Walcher said if the workout
instructor was backed by a quality
club and had a degree in a fitness
field or had certification, it is most
likely safe.
The most important thing to look
for is qualifications in addition to
being trained in kickboxing, Walcher
said.
But by moving the classes to a
bigger space to keep up with the
demand, students can have the advan
tage of a real live workout instead of
staring into a TV screen, and worry
ing if a program is safe or not.
“We’re hoping the popularity
does keep up so we can move to a
bigger area,” Robinson said.