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Wednesday, March 22,2000 dailyneb.com Vol 99, Issue 123 ^^lS&e'page**“*
-LEGISLATURE
Research bill advances to floor
Chambers makes vow to filibuster
By Veronica Daehn
Stiff writer
Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers promised
Tuesday to stall a bill banning the use of aborted
fetal tissue in research if it were advanced to the
floor for debate. '
The Legislature voted Tuesday to pull the bill
out of die Judiciary Committee.
Chambers, who is notorious for his extensive
filibusters, is against the bill.
“I am going to have a ball,” Chambers said.
“The Legislature during the time this thing is
debated will be mine. 1 can take the full eight hours
myself.”
At the end of eight hours, if at least 33 senators
vote to end debate, it will end. The senators then
can vote on the bill.
LB 1405 failed to advance out of committee
and onto the floor earlier this month when com
mittee members were deadlocked in a 44 vote.
The bill needed 25 votes from the floor to be
pulled out of committee. Twenty-eight senators
voted Tuesday to place the bill on general file. Two
senators were absent.
It generally takes a bill three days to be put on
the agenda, so LB1405 could be heard as early as
Friday.
Sen. John Hilgert of Omaha introduced the bill
in response to the discovery in November that
UNMC was using aborted fetal tissue in research
of neurodegenerative diseases.
Twenty-seven senators co-signed in support of
the bill.
Hilgert said now is the time for the Legislature
to take a stand on the issue.
“If we don’t do anything about this, there’s
going to be more and more issues coming down,”
Hilgert said. “There needs to be protocols and pro
cedures in place.”
Sen. Kermit Brashear of Omaha, chairman of
the Judiciary Committee, submitted the request to
pull the bill.
Chambers said it was the first time a commit
tee chairman had lobbied the Legislature to pull a
bill out of his own committee.
The university needs guidance, Brashear said.
“I think of the university as a dysfunctional
adult child,” he said. “Its learned behaviors are dis
abling it”
Brashear urged senators to look at the universi
ty’s history.
Brashear brought up the accusations that the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln mishandled
American Indian remains and denied doing so. He
also said gender equity in hiring and treatment is
still not realized.
“We have a critical failure of governance (in
the university system),” Brashear said.
This is an issue for the taxpayers of Nebraska,
Please see FETAL on 7
Engineer
explains
disaster
decisions m&feafter he
predicted Challenger tragedy.
By Derek Lippincott
Staff writer
Fourteen years after predicting one of
die greatest tragedies in American history,
Roger Boisjoly spoke at UNL Tuesday
about what led to the explosion of the
space shuttle Challenger.
Boisjoly was an engineer for Morton
Thiokol, the company contracted by
NASA that was responsible for making
die faulty part.
At the time of the explosion, Boisjoly
had more than 25 years of experience as
an aerospace engineer, yet managers of
Morton Thiokol authorized NASA to
launch the Challenger on Jan. 28,1986,
despite his warnings.
Boisjoly is renowned for the role he
played in trying to stop the launch of the
Challenger, said John Ballard, associate
dean of the College of Engineering and
Technology.
Boisjoly emphasized to the estimated
crowd of 300 people gathered in the
Nebraska Union that his speech wasn’t
intended to be a negative program.
“I don’t want you to dwell on any of
the negatives here,” Boisjoly said. “It’s
really not about the engine failure. It’s not
about the loss of seven lives. It’s about pro
fessionalism.”
Boisjoly gave a detailed analysis of
the problem that caused the explosion of
die Challenger. The joints that connected
the two four-piece external engines on the
sides of the shuttle were faulty, causing
improper seals after ignition in cold
weather.
“It was a Murphy’s law joint,”
Boisjoly said. “If something can go
wrong, it will. You never want to tempt
Mr. Murphy. He works on his own time
table, not ours.”
Boisjoly talked about several previous
flights that were successful, but recovered
engines showed clear malfunction of die
engine joints. The one flight where the
engines blew up happened to be carrying
Please see SHUTTLE on 6
In bloom
_ ' : ^- ■ •_: ______ _ .
Sharon Kolbet/DN
STUDENTS WALK PAST the daffodils near Andrews Hall. Tuesday’s high was 48 degrees, and Thursday calls for cloudy skies, possible showers
and a high in the low 50s.
Threatening caller faces jail sentence
^ Hopefully it will
be taken care of
and there will be
no more phone
calls, but we can
only hope.”
Barbara McGill
university police officer
By Michelle Starr
Staff writer
The man who made threatening
phone calls to several women across
the country last fall, including
University of Nebraska-Lincoln stu
dents, was sentenced in federal court
in New York on Tuesday.
Sean Patrick Francis, 21, was sen
tenced to 22 months in prison for
making threatening phone calls from
Middleton, N.Y., to eight different
women in five states, including'
Nebraska, said Mary Jo White, the
U.S. attorney for the Southern District
of New York in a statement.
Other victims include women
from Kansas, Montana, North Dakota
and Oregon.
Francis pleaded guilty on Dec. 21
to an eight-count charge of felony
information for more than 75 calls
made between Aug. 28 and Nov. 3,
1999, in which he threatened to rape
or kill the women, White said.
University Police Ofc. Barbara
McGill said in addition to Tuesday’s
sentence, U.S. District Judge Colleen
- McMahon put Francis on probation
for three years, ordered he receive
alcohol abuse treatment and recom
mended Francis seek psychological
treatment.
McGill, who has worked on the
case on Lincoln’s campus for the past
two years, said at least 15 reports from
women on UNL’s campus were filed
last fall.
“I think that (his conviction) is
great if that will take care of the prob
lem and make him stop calling,”
McGill said. “But time will tell.”
McGill said she hoped the calls
would end, but the judge ruled that
Francis will still have phone privi
Please see CALLS on 8