ZM/vNebraskan
Since 1901
Editor Sarah Baker
Opinion Page Editor Samuel McKewon
Managing Editor Bradley Davis
We're No. 1 ?
Headless university should
take lessons from Athletics
We’re No. 1! And we’re really, really not.
It’s so common that it no longer surprises us
or even angers us. There is Nebraska, the all
encompassing athletic machine that churns
out conference champions and occasionally a
national championship.
There’s its world-renowned facilities, its
world-class athletes, some of whom will repre
sent their countries in the coming 2000
Olympics, and there’s football, the cash cow of
them all, a living, breathing, multimedia-lov
ing beast that casts a shadow upon the city, the
state.
And then there is the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, where, well, the athletes go
to school.
We’d very much like to believe otherwise.
We’d like to believe that UNL is an efficient
machine like its athletic counterpart, inde
pendent and strong, drawing the finest stu
dents and the brightest teachers, its research
impeccable, its arts a paragon of modem form
and beauty.
... the learn
ing commu
nity can
take three
lessons
from the
sports
teams in
howto
continually
produce
nationally
known
programs.
This is what we’d like to
believe. But it isn’t what we
know.
What we know is that Vice
Chancellor for Research,
Marsha Torr, left UNL last
week for greener pastures,
marking yet another adminis- _
trator in aline of six to vacate a
position within the hierarchy.
Another departure, another
step toward having a genuine
“headless university.”
Does it even matter what
tier we end up in?
Putting athletics and aca
demics side by side, it’s rea
sonably clear who comes out
the winner. And while playing
and learning are two different disciplines, the
learning community can take three lessons
from the sports teams in how to continually
produce nationally known programs.
■ Retention - The Athletic Department
keeps most of its coaches, office workers and
administrators year after year, though those
workers receive offers elsewhere. Why?
Because the department has learned to pro
mote from within in most cases.
Some academics argue they recruit the best
talent possible, regardless of their connections
to the state. A fair statement, but the Athletic
Department has proven that loyalty pays off.
■ Pay-While Frank Solich is not among the
highest paid football coaches in the country
(He receives plenty of his cash through
endorsements.), the coaches of smaller sports
are well compensated. Consider this the idea
that keeps most of the smaller sports strong,
feeding into the notion of retention and conti
nuity. When administrators and professors
leave, it's the pay that they’re leaving for.
'•B The money game - The department,
under Athletic Director Bill Byrne, has been
strong in recruiting money from outside
sources to infuse into the program. While busi
ness partnerships are limited in a city the size
of Lincoln, the academic side has to be proac
tive in searching out alternative sources of
funding. As much as we criticize a deal like
Pepsi, we see it as a situation where losing the
right to choose your cola drink is better than
losing funding.
Edttorial Board
Sarah Baker, Bradley Davis, Josh Funk, Matthew Hansen,
Samuel McKewon, Dane Stickney, Kimberly Sweet
Letters PoAcy
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Rot at this cold, cruel school
“What I need of you is for
you to finger The Man-point
out who’s got your back
against the wall and the knife
point ready to draw a smile on
your neck in crimson.
Think the university is
screwing you or someone else SfOTillftl
over? Drop me a line; give me
the 411. Ill take it fiom there. —
I’m going to be the inves
tigative columnist this university has been yearning
for, and 11m going to stick up for die little guy Think a
teacher’s no good? Adepartmentrepressingpeople? A
program mired in corruption and bathing in blood
money? Whatever it takes, I'm going to go toe to toe for
you folks. This is for your own good”
- Columnist OiffHicks on Aug. 23,1999
I hate rusty apples. As we speak at 11:01 a.m. on
Wednesday, Aug. 16,1 am eating a rusty apple. It is nei
ther red nor green but sort of this mashing of in
between hues. The juice is gone; the fruit's lost its
spunk. Drop dead apple
“What kind of idiotic, senseless waste my life
has been so for, I can only hope to make you guess, fj
What kind of idiotic senseless life you have
before you, I think I can predict as accurately as
any Nostradamus of doom.
Slaving for The
Man all of your
days, by the ^k
sweat of your
brow you shall ^k
eat your credit
card debt
Hating ■
your job, feeling w
that it robs you V
of your kid’s W
childhood, of ■|i|
even the simple V
daily pleasures, H
you'll be chained H
to it, nevertheless, fl
by the car pay- H
ment, the house V
payment, the day ■
care bill, the insur- ■
ance premium.”
-Opinion Editor 1
Mark Baldridge on *
Aug. 20,1999
I imagine how it
must be, stuck in the V
crisper. How the cold V
descends in waves to pluck ^
tiny explosions on the apple’s
surface. How the apple stays 1
clean and strong on the top,
but how the cold begins to I
creep down the smooth ace of 1
the beast, down toward that 1
little hairy center at the bot
tom, where it sinks in, invites
its Maids, and now inside, creeps
upward, rusting from the inside.
“Welcome back to the fabricated, shel
tered, unrealistic and impossibly Wonder
Bread that is the campus culture.”
- Opinion Editor Joshua Gillin on Jan.
12,1998
So here’s this apple, OK, and see,
there’s the mini ripples on the bot
tom, where the skin’s folded together
so you know it’s bad down there.
And you just know you shouldn’t
eat it You so know it is not good
for you. So you rat all around it
But maybe...
Just to see if it’s not all a
facade, you take those two front
teeth and make a dive bomb
into scary regions. In the immortal
words of somebody who would say
it “Oh, it is so gross!”
And you realize - my God.1 -everything they said,
it’s all true We really do live in a senseless universe
fabricated like outdated white bread where the peo
ple are truly prepared to carve a smile in crimson - in
your neck, for God sakes-and then bathe in the blood
money, where they’re aD gonna laugh at you!
You remember what Carrie did when her mom
told her they were all gonna laugh at her? She was
carving the crimson smiles on their necks.
So let's mark it down, my contribution to the
senseless, awful, sick and hasty work! we live in:
“This university is rotting, and we are rotting with
it like an apple rots, not from the outside, but deep
inside, in our souls, as the cold reality of lost love and
failed promise begins to reveal as the certainty as we
all lmewit would be.
And in the end, we realize that if there is a God, hds
a sadistic little jokester who likes to watch his experi
ments die in front of me, like the boy who scorches the
spider on the sidewalk with a magnifying glass
Now, like the apple, we realize that prolonged
exposure to this cold, cruel world doesn't make any
thing better. It just rusts us up, until we die"
My cheap metaphor to you. God only hopes
somebody quotes me someday.
Proving your
worth takes
more than
just looks
Some people
say looks can get
you anywhere.
I believe
them.
Just a couple
of weeks ago, I
was flying back -
from London
with a friend - a
good-looking
male Mend at that
Upon arrival at the airport, we
were faced with a daunting line,
roughly composed of about 500 peo
ple, suitcases, crying babies and
screaming lads all waiting to get on the
same flight we were flying home on.
To make a rather long story short,
the condeige carrying our bags asked
the man in the blue British Airways
suit if my Mend could walk past the
line and up to the counter immediate
The man said
no.
Then, a few
seconds later,
the concierge
asked the same
man wearing the
blue British
Airways suit if
another person
could get past -
that person
me.
e man in
the suit took a
look, saw my
blonde, braided
hair, tight T
shirt, three carts
full of heavy lug
gage and sheep
ishly cute grin,
smiled, and said
“Right this way,
love." (My friend
snuck across the
line to meet me
at the counter.)
This isn’t the
first case of this
The man in
the suit
took a look,
saw my
blonde,
braided
hair, tight
T-shirt,
three carts
full of
heavy
luggage
and
sheepishly
cute grin,
smiled, and
said, ‘Right
this way,
love/
nappening ana
probably won’t be the last. There have
been times when I’ve blatantly used it
to my advantage.
And although sometimes it makes
things easier, I still wonder about it
Like when I was in the running to
become editor of the Daily Nebraskan,
for instance.
I turned in a faceless application a
few months before the actual, face-to
face interview where I had to sit at a
table with 10 strangers and talk about
myself and why I was good for the
position.
I was nervous. Because I was run
ning against someone I thought was a
worthy opponent.
Also because I didn’t know what I
was getting myself into and I didn’t
know if it was really what I wanted. But
mostly because I knew they wouldn't
take me seriously.
When visualizing a person in a
position of importance, most don't
visualize me, but a man in a suit. A
bore.
When I wear a suit, I still look like
me.
I have ideas. I like art and film and
theater and dancing to techno music.
I also read. Newspapers. And
books.
Yet some still say that all this hap
pened because of the blonde hair and
the tight T-shirt
In high school, I didn't know the
answer, and I never even considered it
because I didn't get anything.
Then when I got to college, I got
things. I got internships and reporting -
jobs at the DN and attention. I got
noticed by professors when no one
naa ever noucea me oeiore.
I never thought it was because of
any other reason than that I was good.
And that I had talent
Then people started to talk. They
said I was just another one of “those
girls.” One guy took to calling me the
“Golden Child.*
Others never said it, but I knew
they thought my achievements were
unfair to everyone else.
Outside of the Daily Nebraskan
office, this is the visible me. Inside the
DN, things are different
That's why the Daily Nebraskan
looks different. The writing is differ
ent. The size is bigger. Different. The
whole is a different thing than it was
before I, before all of us, came.
Now the people outside have
become the same as that man at the
British Airways counter in the blue
suit.
They all have the choice of viewing
things the same way he did.
They can put me at the front of the
line.
Or they can make me wait