EDITOR
Josh Funk
OPINION
EDITOR
Mark Baldridge
EDITORIAL
BOARD
Lindsay Young
Jessica Fargen
Samuel McKewon
Cliff Hicks
Kimberly Sweet
Our
VIEW
Lost
opportunity
Low faculty salaries
still a sore spot
Most students have signed up for
•spring classes. They consulted their
friends on who the best professors are.
Heard of any class where you actually
learn something?
Take chemistry with Paul Kelter. He
was awarded UNL’s outstanding teaching
award two years in a row.
Oh wait. You can’t. He’s gone.
Need a good English class?
Take Marly Swick. She’s been here for
11 years, and her most recent novel
received kudos from the New York Times
Book Review.
It’s too late. She’s gone too.
Add sociologist Paul Amato and
English professor Moira Ferguson to that
growing list of UNL professors who have
said adios to the university this year for *
higher salaries or better opportunities at
other schools.
UNL offered Ferguson, who founded
the women’s studies program at UNL,
JS82,000 a year. Another university
offered her $ 100,000.
Ferguson, who was with UNL for 23
years, went on sabbatical and never came
back.
“She’s a very long-time, very dedicat
ed professor. Like so many women pro
fessors at the university, she finds herself
more welcome at other universities,”
Ferguson’s lawyer, Vince Powers, told the
Lincoln Journal Star.
You see the pattern. You get the pic
ture.
The powers that be have recently
shown some improvements in faculty
salaries, but those steps might be too
small, too slow.
The damage may already be done.
This spring the Legislature included
about $20 million for faculty salaries,
which will bring UNL up to barely the
midpoint of our peer institutions.
__ UNL just designated interest from a
recent endowment to recruit 24 new
nationally acclaimed professors.
But it might be too late for the good
professors we already have. Maybe they
have put their resume out there, fed up
with not getting paid what they deserve.
Maybe they see other respected pro
fessors leaving, and they want to head out,
too.
So in the meantime, hordes of young,
eager freshmen who would have been
dazzled by Kelter’s chemistry class, pon
dered great literature in Swick’s class and
studied under the founder of UNL’s
women’s studies program are out of luck.
Students continue to pay higher tuition
each year, but if the best professors con
tinue to feel unappreciated and underpaid,
students will get less for their money.
It all adds up to a lesser university.
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Acoiumn is solely the opinion of its author.
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DN
LETTERS
(Sarcasm)
What a victory it will be for Gov.
Johanns and other pro-lifers if they
stop the use of aborted fetal cells for
research at the University of
Nebraska!
Rather than being part of the
effort to cure a disease debilitating
millions of Americans each year, the
fetal tissue will instead be stuffed into
red medical waste bags, incinerated
and then sent to the landfill.
That’s terrific, Governor,
because, as the director of Lincoln’s
Family First pointed out, it is crucial
to avoid the potential black market
for aborted fetuses.
While We’re at it, we should also
ban organ donation, since it has creat
ed a huge black market, and adoption,
since children are sometimes bought
and sold.
Come on, people! Whatever your
feelings about abortion, understand
that these cells are being used in
important research as opposed to
being dumped in the garbage.
Rachel Kester
senior
civil engineering
Not Funny
Whoa Thereeeeeesa! (Letters
Wed.)
Where dd you get off thinking
that paying child support doesn’t
change the lives of the men who pay
it?
Yeah, you’re right, that extra
$400 a month would be insignificant
to a person.
If women were held responsible
for both parties’ actions, then men
would not have to pay child support
(this is where the light above your
head actually lights up).
Think about this: If we aren’t
using a condom, then you aren’t. And
who the hell said that you can’t enjoy
the same casual sex life that I, or
rather we men, do. I wouldn’t mind.
That’s a privilege you give to
yourself. It is a matter of using con
traceptives. In fact, many women do
give themselves this privilege and
don’t use contraceptives, a mutual
action with their partners, and this is
why I agree with J.J. Harder’s
“Abortapatch” column (DN Nov. 10).
One more thing, clinic commer
cials during the Super Bowl - not
funny.
Scott Richard Phillips
sophomore
college of business administra ion
E-hell
Wednesday’s Daily Nebraskan
article on the “new and improved” e
mail system for UNL was right on die
mark: It’s a boondoggle.
Our entire lab is Mac (eight com
puters), and NONE will handle Lotus
Notes because Lotus is such a large
and cumbersome piece of software.
None of our computers is new or
large enough to accommodate the
software.
It may be good for administrators
who use calendars and other bells and
whistles (and who seem to be the
ones mandating the change and who,
coincidentally, have the newest com
puters), but the faculty and students
need rapid and efficient communica
tion with our available hardware.
The system I, and many of my
colleagues and students, now use
(UNLServe and popmail) is well
suited to our research, teaching and
communication needs.
Combine this with the fact
that one needs to attend classes to
learn how to use this less “user
friendly” system, and you can clearly
see there is a problem. Even after
these training sessions, most of the e
mails I receive from people using
Lotus Notes are poorly or incorrectly
formatted, which attests to the diffi
cult nature of the program. -
No, we don’t need the 30 e-mail
systems mentioned in the article, but
we should not be forced to migrate to
an expensive and inefficient program
that is heavy with features we shall
not use and is TOO BIG for most of
our computers.
I suggest the supposed savings to
UNL won’t materialize were we all to
switch to Lotus.
ine current system oi letting
those go to Lotus who wish to, but
leaving the rest of us with our pop
mail capability, seems the best com
promise to me.
Is the University of Nebraska
REALLY going to make some facul
ty and a lot of graduate students go
without what is now an essential
communication tool (for lack
of sufficient hardware) in order to
establish a new system that was
designed for a smaller community of
users with different needs?
I hope not.
Brett C. Ratcliffe
curator and professor
museum
A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Waste
If you want to offer the campus a piece of your mind, there is not
a better way to do it than to have it printed weekly in the Daily
Nebraskan. Apply for a columnist or editorial cartoonist position
at the DN and you too can have one of those cool mug shots run
with your silly ideas. Get an application at the DN offices or online
at www.DaityNeb.com, and return it with two sample columns to 20
Nebraska Union 6y Friday, Dec. 3,1999. The Daily Nebraskan is an
eqwl opportunity employer and adheres to all applicable hiring
guidelines. ■ * i ^
