Arts and Sciences
ASUN debate held
sfcv ■ t : ..
■ The college’s candidates
visited with students and
discussed ideas.
By Glenn Connot
Staff writer
Improving communication in the
Arts and Sciences college is the goal
of many of its ASUN senate candi
dates.
The candidates were given a
chance to share their goals at this
year’s Arts and Sciences Senate
Candidate Debate on Tuesday after
noon.
The Arts and Sciences Student
Advisory Board sponsored die debate
for candidates vying for six seats in
ASUN. . I
The debate gave candidates an
opportunity to express their stance on
issues that will be important in this
year’s March 1 student government
election and allowed students to get to
know the candidates better.
The event began at 4 p.m. with
free pizza and pop. The event was
open to all students, including those
not enrolled in the Arts and Sciences
college.
Then the group moved to the
Nebraska Union Auditorium for an
informal debate. About 50 students
attended the debate.
The debate began with a welcome
from mediator Mindy Lacey. The 14
of the total 16 candidates present were
then allowed to brief the audience on
their backgrounds and political plat
forms.
Many issues were mentioned,
including lowering the foreign lan
guage requirement for Arts and
Sciences students, organizing bigger
and better student events, making
public the students’ evaluations of
teachers and improving communica
tion between students, staff and
ASUN.
The candidates were then allowed
to field questions from the audience
and from a list of non-partial ques
tions from the mediator.
This year’s candidate debate was
deemed a success by debate organiz
ers Lacey and Laura Grother, mem
bers of the Arts and Sciences Student
Advisory Board. Audience atten
dance was up from last year’s debate.
The increased attendance
improves the senators’ view of their
positions, said Grother, the board’s
vice president and a senate candidate.
“It lets them know-they’re going to be
accountable during die election year.”
A list of the Arts and Sciences
senate candidates are posted in the
ASUN office window at 136
Nebraska Union.
The College of Business
Administration will be holding a
debate Thursday at 7:30 p.m. in the
Nebraska Union main lounge.
Secretary of Education
challenges standards
EDUCATION from page 1
right now is the time to raise the stan
dards.
“A quality education for every
child is the new civil right for the 21st
century,” Riley said. “But there is a
gap between what we know we
should be doing and what we are
actually doing.”
Quality teachers are the key to a
good education system, he said. They
are among the “real patriots of the
20th century era.”
Riley said the country will need
two million teachers within the next
10 years, and just filling the posi
tions will not work.
States need to set standards for
teachers and then stick to those stan
dards when it comes to hiring educa
tors, he said.
The nation also needs to look into
making teaching a yearlong, higher
paid profession, Riley said.
“We will never really imprdve
education until we come to grips
with teacher compensation,” he said.
“If we demand more of teachers, we
need to compensate them and treat
them li|ce the professionals they are.”
Sen. Ardyce Bohlke of Hastings,
chairwoman of the Education
Committee, has introduced several
bills this session dealing with
Nebraska teachers.
She said she was pleased Riley
mentioned several of the things that
Nebraska had legislation for already.
“We have 10 priority bills in the
Education Committee this session,”
Bohlke said. “That’s a huge amount,
and it shows the dedication of the
senators.”
Parents play a role in education
too, Riley said.
They need to stay connected with
their teen-age children and listen to
what they are saying, he said.
“The most important thing we
can give young people is a senseiof
hope,” Riley said.
Setting new expectations is one
thing, he said, but they also need to
be implemented correctly.
” Good things are
happening in
public education.” .
Mike Johanns
governor
All students should be able to
read well by the time they are in the
third grade, and eighth-graders
should be exposed to geometry or
algebra, Riley said.
High schools also need to offer
more Advanced Placement courses
and foreign language programs, he
said.
Riley, who favors smaller high
schools, said high school seniors
should have to pass a comprehensive
final exam before they could gradu
ate. ij
Johanns disagreed with this pro
posal. '
The governor said he supports
Nebraska’s method - state standards
with localaccountability.
“Good things are happening in
public education,” Johanns said.
“Sometimes when there’s a move
ment to fix something that isn’t bro
ken we need to recognize that it isn’t
broken.”
Riley said he wants to implement
a senior-year transition project that
would bring together university lead
ers, parents and students to take a
closer look at the senior year of high
school.
Students’ senior years in high
school determine their levels of suc
cess in college, Riley said.
He said the new expectations for
America’s education system can be
set and exceeded if everyone works
together.
“I hope in 50 years America will
look back and say, yes, we lifted our
children,” Riley said. “Let’s go for
ward and create a great democracy of
excellence for this century.”
Lincoln businesses offer
their 2 cents in penny drive
■ Community works
to collect money to pay
for Lincoln statue.
By Jennifer Walker
SeniorecHtor
A penny doesn’t buy much these
days.
But a community project that start
ed Feb. 11 will put the city of Lincoln’s
pennies to work for a good cause.
The Lincoln Arts Council, in coop
eration with the mayor’s office and
local businesses, is sponsoring a penny
collection, called Pennies for Lincoln,
that will pay for a sculpture for the front
of the new Justice and Law
Enforcement Center, 575 S. 10* St
The idea came from the Public Art
committee, which is a subgroup of the
Lincoln Arts Council, said Margaret
Berry, executive director of the Lincoln
Arts Council.
“We thought this was the perfect
way to commemorate Lincoln because
he’s on the penny,” Berry said.
The Lincoln Arts Council and the
mayor’s office have issued a challenge
to local businesses, encouraging them
to find creative ways to collect pennies.
Berry said that Valentino’s of Lincoln
was the first store to offer an idea.
Mike Messineo, instructor of oper
ations for Valentino’s of Lincoln, pro
posed that Valentino’s offer up to $1 off
the price of a pizza, depending on the
number of pennies customers donate.
Berry said Peoples Natural Gas
also planned an in-office program for
its employees. Gwen Newman picked
up the collection cans for die company.
“So far, we’ve only collected the
containers from the Lincoln Arts
Council,” Newman said. “But we’ve
put one at the reception area where
people come to pay their bills, and we
have one in the lunch room for our
employees. We’re just putting them out
there and hoping people will put in
their 2 cents.”
No one business or donor will con
tribute the majority of the cost for the
project, Berry said, which is the point
of the penny drive.
“We designed (the Pennies for
Lincoln project) not for any one group
but for a broad number of sources,”
Berry said, “We wanted the whole
community to be a part of it”
That community interest is dis
played through TCahoa Elementary
School’s, 7700 Leighton Ave., involve
ment in die project.
The school’s third-graders have
crafted collection cans for the school’s
classrooms and for the classrooms of
other schools in die city. Jane Janesh, a
teacher at Kahoa, is in charge of the
project
Mayor Don Wesely’s office is also
a supporter of Pennies for Lincoln. In a
statement Wesely said the sculpture
would “create a beautiful and lasting
tribute to our 16th president, for whom
this city is named.”
Pennies for Lincoln will run until
March 24, when the Lincoln Arts
Council hopes to have raised the
$40,000 needed to complete the sculp
ture.
It will be cast in bronze from a
mold the Sheldon Memorial Art
Gallery purchased in 1996 from the
family of the artist, Louis Slobodan.
The original sculpture resides in
the Department of the Interior in
Washington, D.C., according to the
Lincoln Arts Council’s Web site,
www.artscene.org/pennies.
Pennies will be collected by local
businesses, including the City of
Lincoln-Lancaster County Public
Building Commission, the Lincoln
Journal Star, the Lincoln Public
Schools and Kahoa Elementary
School, The Mill, Russ’s Markets, U
Stop Convenience Shops, Valentino’s
of Lincoln and Kmart.