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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 8, 2000)
I Friday September 8,2000 Volume 100 Issue 15 dailyneb.com Since 1901 ZM/yNebraskan Columnists Emfly Moran and Yasmin McEwen explore the choice of love over religion In Opinion/4 Notre Dame, Huskers meet for first time in 27 years In SportsWeekend/10 The bodacious bard better known as Shakespeare takes a groovealicious turn this weekend In Arts/8 Not all answer when opportunities to leave UNL knock Editor’s Note: With UNL in a state of flux because of vacant posts in its senior administration, the Daily Nebraskan this week exam ines those vacancies and their effects. BY VERONICA DAEHN If Irv Omtvedt had wanted to leave the University of Nebraska Lincoln, he could have. Throughout his 25-year tenure at UNL, the former vice chancellor for the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources had offers from other schools will ing to pay him more money. But unlike so many other administrators tempted by a high er salary and more benefits these days, Omtvedt stayed at UNL because of the chances he was given to excel. "I had several opportunities to leave,” Omtvedt said. “The University of Nebraska treated me very well in terms of giving me professional growth opportuni ties throughout my career.” The same is true for other administrators at UNL Like Omtvedt, James Griesen, vice chancellor for student affairs, said he has had no desire to leave the university. Griesen has been at UNL for 16 years and said he loves what he is doing. "I have a very challenging and rewarding job right here,” Griesen said. “So why move?” Griesen came to Nebraska from Michigan in 1978 when he took a position as vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. In 1984, he moved to UNL as associate vice chancellor for aca demic affairs and soon after became interim vice chancellor for student affairs. Griesen liked the student affairs position at UNL so well that he has been there ever since, despite offers from other schools. Griesen said two Big 10 insti tutions had aggressively recruited him since he’d been at UNL. “I thought about (leaving),” he said. "But I like where I’m at” Griesen said he enjoys being an administrator and wouldn’t change anything about his job at the university. Cecil Steward, retired dean of architecture, agreed that UNL was a good place to grow. Steward, who retired in January, said he decided early on in his 27 years at the university that it was the right place for him to devote his talents. But Steward, too, was approached by other schools dur ing the middle of his career at UNL. He stayed in Nebraska because it was a healthy program, he said. “There was a sense of progress here that I could see and feel,” he said. "I had no reason to go any where else." Steward said the university’s architecture program had a good <V I relationship with the community. Nebraska business people and other state leaders recognized the importance of a quality school of architecture, he said. The respect UNL’s school of architecture received made Steward more motivated to stay on as dean. “(Nebraska) was a place to grow in and a good place to nur ture the goals I had,” he said. James O’Hanlon, dean of the Teachers College, has spent 34 years at the university, mostly because of an allegiance to the institution.O’Hanlon said he has considered leaving for another school, but has never taken it seri ously. His parents graduated from UNL, so O’Hanlon said he had been part of the university since he was young. O’Hanlon went to college in Iowa and Ohio and said he moved back to Nebraska after graduation because of a loyalty he felt to to the state. “I sort of grew up leading this place,” he said. “I believe in this university and the state.” O’Hanlon said UNL has pro vided him with opportunities to Please see SCHOOL on 6 Mkhae! James is in his first semester asa senior lecturer in the depart ment of textiles, dothing and design.James has been a stu dio artist for 25 years and has work displayed in the Smithsonian institute's per manent collec tion. New lecturer creates art one stitch at a time BY BRIAN CARLSON In his sunlit basement studio, Michael James resumes work on his latest project, a quilt designed after a historic 17th-Century flag from the Swiss canton of Bern. Seated at his sewing machine, he pieces together the bluish-gray and blood-red hand-painted cotton fab ric. As with his other pieces, James is trying to create a dynamic interac tion between the quilt and the view er. I want my pieces to arrest the viewer and also confront the viewer in a provocative way,” he said. James, a world-renowned quilter, is widely credited with helping to make the quilt an art form. When he brought his artistic background to quilting in the 1970s, he led advance ments in color usage and helped transform quilts from decorative objects for beds to wall hangings. Now James has brought his pas sion for quilting and design to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This is his first semester as a senior lectur er in the department of textiles, clothing and design. For three years, James has been on the board of the International Quilt Study Center in Lincoln, the largest public collection of quilts in the world. James had always lived in Massachusetts, and last year he taught some adult classes at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. UNL offered James a teaching position, and he accepted. UNL will have a chance to view James’ work beginning Oct. 21, when a show presenting both his old and new works opens at the Robert Hillestad Gallery on East Campus. In the March issue of Art & Antiques magazine, James’ quilt, “Rhythm/Color: Spanish Dance,” is listed as one of the "Top Treasures of the Century.” The magazine quotes Ulysses Dietz, curator of decorative arts at Newark Museum in New Jersey, as saying that James is “the single most important figure in the transforma tion of the quilt from a folk art to a fine art in the late 20th centuiy.” “He arrived at quilt-making as a painter, not a stitcher, and thus has taken the quilt from the realm of the sewing circle and the quilting bee and placed it firmly on the gallery wall," Dietz said. But James resists such analyses. He is modest about his contributions to the field of quilting, mostly because his study of the history of quilting in the United States has con vinced him it has always been an art form. “People have always considered quilts to be decorative objects,” he said. "I look at 18th- and 19th Century quilts as just as much art quilts as anything anybody’s doing today.” James' works are presented in permanent collections at several museums, including the Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian Institution, the American Craft Museum and the Museum of the American Quilter’s Society. Abroad, his works have appeared Please see QUILT on 5 Staying sober means meals at checkpoints BY JOSH FUNK This weekend four area law enforcement agen cies will join forces to get drunken drivers off Lincoln streets with two sobriety checkpoints. The county sheriff, State Patrol, city and universi ty police departments will run one checkpoint tonight from about 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. and one Saturday around the same times. Mothers Against Drunk Driving and Runza restaurants are sponsoring the effort to help people realize the serious consequences of driving drunk. “If one person doesn’t have to go through what my Mends and fafnily had to go through,” said MADD representative Julie Hinds, who had previously been in a crash with a drunken driver. Drivers can expect delays about the duration of a traffic light at the checkpoints, and police will provide positive reinforcement to those drivers who are obey ing the laws. In addition to information about the risks of drunken driving from MADD and police, law-abiding drivers will receive a coupon for a free meal from Runza. “We feel it is worth every meal steal we give out to see people driving safer,” Runza representative Becky Richter said. National studies have shown that on an average weekend night one in 12 drivers on the road is legally drunk, said Fred Zwonechek of the state office of highway safety. Zwonechek said his office provided some grant money, equipment and training to the enforcement project, which is just one part of the approach to curb drunken driving. It has been several years since sobriety check points have been used in Lincoln, primarily because they are so labor-intensive, Lincoln Police Chief Tom Casady said. Many officers are needed to keep traffic moving efficiently. Police plan to have 20 officers at the checkpoints ' along with mobile sobriety testing equipment from Cornhusker Place detoxification center, Lincoln Police Ofc. Greg Cody said. The checkpoints will be operated systematically under guidelines outlined by the U.S. Supreme Court when the practice was challenged in the late 1980s. Police will be stopping cars at regular intervals, such as every third car. Though multi-agency efforts such as this have been uncommon in the past, all those involved said they looked forward to future projects. Drinking is a top concern for University Police, Assistant Chief Bill Manning said. Police hope the checkpoints this weekend will help people realize the dangers and consequences of drunken driving. “Our goal is to remind citizens to drink responsi bly or not at all,” said Col. Tom Nesbitt, state^patrol superintendent UNL works to diversify greek system BY KATIE MUETING Minority students wishing to belong to a multicultural greek organization will soon have an increased range of options. Judy Webster, who was hired as UNL’s first National Pan-Hellenic Council adviser, is working to bring more multicultural sorori ties and fraternities to campus, she said. UNL has one Latino fraternity, Sigma Lambda Beta, which became fully chartered in the sum mer of 1999, but no Latina sororities, said Linda Schwartzkopf, director of Greek Affairs. Webster, along with a group of inter ested students, are working to bring Sigma Lambda Gamma, a Latina sorority, to cam pus, she said. Sigma Lambda Gamma members from the University of Kansas will present an informational session on Saturday at 3 p.m. in the Nebraska Union. Webster said that while any student can join a greek house, minority students can benefit from involve ment in a multicultural greek organization. These groups will provide the students with a forum to express their concerns to the university, Webster said. "I think it will give the students more of a sense of community... togetherness,” Webster said. Toshiko Nanez, a pre-physical therapy student, said the establishment of UNL’s Latino fraternity helped her see the need for a Latina soror ity. She said many of the interested mem bers are friends, and the next step is “to become sisters.” Wendy Barrera, a sophomore pre-crimi nal justice major, said most of the women Please see GREEK on 5 JoshWolfe/DN GREEN DAY: Kent Wilcox, a Nebraska Press employee, climbs the stairs in the presses new building in the Haymarket at 233 N. 8th Street.
