Lucky Charm
Micky’s, the newest bar on O Street,
brings Irish authenticity to the strip.
A&E, PAGE 9
nit’s Over
Nebraska’s men’s basketball sea
son ends with a 63-55 loss to
Baylor. SPORTS, PAGE 16
Friday, March 10,2000 dailyneb.com Vol 99, Issue 120
——saia---—■■—in I -■••rtfii".r>i--»igfe-i,ttaaiarMaffBapi---T-TPrgwii—i——
Josh Wolfe/DN
LINCOLN IRISH DANCERS member Betty Bloomquist teaches a traditional dance to Lisa Hutt on Thursday night at the Auld
Recreation Center, 3140 Sumner St. The dancers performed for a crowd of about 300 mentally disabled people and ended
the night with a dance lesson.
Dancing Irish Dancers give
t ^ ~jn o Lincoln a taste
~_L U L Ij O of Celtic tradition
By Mkhdle Starr
Staff writer
Irish dancing - what a wee good way
to spend an evening.
The craze of Irish dancing took off
after people were mesmerized by
Riverdance, an Irish dance production. It
has sparked lessons from the Karen
McWilliams School of Dance and interest
for an Irish dancing club in Lincoln.
“It’s something that you love it, or you
hate it,” McWilliams said “And if you love
it, you love it with a passion. It’s hypnotic.”
McWilliams began teaching her class
es to 9-year-olds through high school
seniors about three years ago. Since then
70-75 students have been drawn to the
classes, she said.
About the same time Luanne
Anderson, a Lincoln dance teacher for 10
years, organized the Lincoln Irish
Dancers, a dancing club focused on the
Ceili style, in the spring of 1997.
Ceili is traditional Irish folk dancing
and originally was an opportunity for an
informal gathering for dancing, singing
and story telling.
Some of the Lincoln Irish Dancers
took classes once a week from
McWilliams, but because of time con
flicts, the classes had to end, McWilliams
said.
With quick, precise moves, a lot of
jumping with no help of momentum from
arm movement, McWilliams said the style
was one of the hardest dancing forms
because it takes strong legs.
“The stamina that it takes is incredi
Please see IRISH on 7
Irish Dancing took off in part
because of the success of
Riverdance. The Lincoln Irish
Dancers do 25 -30
performances a year.
Pre-show entertainment at
Joyo Theatre
The Ambassador Care
Center
i nats hntertainment -
Antelope Park Bandshell
Melanie Falk/DN
Student to tell his story at Harvard
By Kimberly Sweet
Staffwriter
UNL senior Joel Wiegert’s spring break
plans are a little out of the ordinary.
During a week when college students
typically flock to the nation’s hot spots to
sun bathe and take in plenty of booze,
Wiegert will be doing the opposite.
He will be proclaiming his status as a
“former binge drinker” during a press con
ference at Harvard University.
Tuesday, officials from the Harvard
School of Public Health will give updated
statistics about binge drinking on college
campuses.
Wiegert will be there as one of two stu
dents chosen to tell the nation his story of
once having been a binge drinker.
The other student, who is from Florida
State, will talk about his experiences as an
“abstainer.”
During his appearance, Wiegert will
tell about his experience of coming to col
lege and rapidly becoming a part of the
binge-drinking scene.
“I was part of the counter-culture when
I came to college,” Wiegert said. “When I
had a good time, it was because I was
drinking.
In the past, if alcohol wasn’t part of an
event, Wiegert said he wouldn’t have par
ticipated in it.
He said he eventually woke up to the
dangers of high-risk drinking. As an eco
nomics major, he performed a cost-benefit
analysis, he said
“I have yet to find a benefit to high-risk
drinking,” he said
But in his message to the nation’s
media Tuesday, Wiegert said, he wouldn’t
Please see WIEGERT on 7
— LEGISLATURE —
Tie vote stalls
research bill
in committee
By Veronica Daehn
Staff writer
For now, fetal tissue research is
safe at the University of Nebraska
Medical Center.
Judiciary Committee members
failed to advance a bill Thursday
that would have banned the use of
aborted fetal tissue in research.
Sen. David Hilgert of Omaha
introduced the bill in response to
the discovery last November that
UNMC was using cells from
aborted fetuses for medical
research.
Sen. Paul Hartnett of Bellevue
made the bill his priority bill.
The bill needed five votes to
advance, and there was a stalemate
in the committee - a 4-4 vote.
Elkhom Sen. Dwite Pedersen
voted to advance the bill to the
floor. ..
Despite Thursday’s defeat,
Pedersen said he thought the bill
still would make it to floor debate.
Senators can file a motion next
week that would allow for a floor
vote on whether the bill should be
pulled from committee.
The bill needs 25 votes to be
debated on the floor. Twenty-nine
senators co-signed Hilgert’s bill.
Pedersen said he supported the
bill the whole time.
“We need to look at other alter
natives,” he said. “If we would
have spent all this time working on
finding alternatives (to using the
aborted tissue), we’d have found
some by now.”
Hilgert was unavailable for
comment Thursday, but his legisla
tive aide Joe Cohout said Hilgert
” Now, we’ll get
busy working
on alternatives.”
Dwite Pedersen
Elkhorn senator
always had supported the bill.
“He thought LB 1405 was a
reasonable, responsible reaction to
recent discoveries of the use of
fetal tissue at UNMC.” Cohout
said.
Pedersen said he hoped there
would be an effort to bring the bill
to the floor and get it passed, but he
didn't know who would file the
motion.
The senator said he supported
the research UNMC does but
doesn’t think aborted tissue should
be used
Members of the Judiciary
Committee met in executive ses
sion Thursday morning and did not
discuss the bill before they voted
They had been discussing it
informally since it was introduced,
Pedersen said
“I knew what the vote was
going to be,” he said “Now, we’ll
get busy working on alternatives.”
Senators who voted against
advancing the bill were: Sen. Ernie
Chambers of Omaha, Sen. Pat
Bourne of Omaha, Sen. Jennie
Robak of Columbus and Sen. Matt
Connealy of Decatur.
Besides Pedersen and Hilgert,
Sen. Kermit Brashear of Omaha
and Sen. Tom Baker of Trenton
voted to advance the bill.
Rock for a cause
Ti ——DP——i ii * « — —
Sharon Kolbet/DN
MEMBERS OF THE group of Blue Panic, Jon Kelley, left, and
Doug Oraber, both UNL students, lead off Abelpalooza on
Thursday evening in the Nebraska Union Ballroom. The event
was organized by the Abel Residence Hall Association and Pi
Kappa Alpha.