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.
