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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 15, 2000)
Opinion ZM/yNebraskan Since 1901 Editor Sarah Baker Opinion Page Editor Samuel McKewon Managing Editor Bradley Davis “I know all of you have seen what’s been in the newspaper. I take full responsibility for that. The decision was mine. I apologize for the bad press. I know many of you may be hearing about it from the people you see.” ASUN President Joel Schafer on the Daily Nebraskan story saying ASUN sold a list of addresses of freshmen to the Lincoln Journal Star for its back-to-school issue “It was through my pro-life eyes that I watched director Lasse Hallstrom’s ‘The Cider House Rules.’ The same flick that earned writer John Irving a Maggie Award from Planned Parenthood. “And it was with my pro-life mind that I decided ‘Cider House’ is the best film social commentary about abortion this country has ever produced. A great film.” Columnist Josh Knaub on the experience of the film “The Cider House Rules” “It was the right decision. We had a quarter back that had completed three passes up to this point. I don’t think any magic was going to come down from the sky and all of the sudden we are going to throw the footbalfup in the air. “I would do that again, and I didn’t ask any one’s opinion on that one. That was my call.” Notre Dame Coach Bob Davie on his deci sion to run out the clock against Nebraska instead of going for the victory in the fourth quarter “Those are the kind of games you dream of, the kind of games you want all the time. You don’t want them until you’re done with them. It was just amazing the way it ended up. It was amazing the feeling I had. It was a feeling of greatness, a feeling that you accomplished something that maybe^not a lot of people think you would have and in front of a nation al broadcast with all our fans there. It means so much more than I ever thought it would have.” Nebraska quarterback Eric Crouch on NU’s 27-24 win over Notre Dame “Out of the 9,000 institutions in the United States, only 750 are accredited. Once a gallery is accredited, it’s important to keep it up. It’s very rare that we revoke that status. We want to make sure institutions are still performing at the same level they were accredited at.” Sheldon Art Gallery Director Janice Dreisbach on the possibility of losing accred itation for the museum “We talk a lot about diminishing morals, and the Boy Scouts stand up to that and hold true to the values that make us who we are.” Craig Reinsch, a UNL sophomore civil engineering major and leader of Boy Scout Troop 72, on supporting the ban against gays in the Boy Scouts “Don’t get me wrong, bonding isn’t always bad (and it doesn’t have to exclude males), but women seem to have to get away from the creatures with penises in order to release themselves. Women are just as mean to each other as men are to women.” Columnist Karen Brown on the pratfalls of bonding “By all means, keep the laughter in your hearts and keep the poetry in your mind and souls.” Poet and writer Maya Angelou on lessons on life Editorial Board Sarah Baker, Bradley Davis, Josh Funk, Matthew Hansen, Samuel McKewon, Dane Stickney, Kimberly Sweet Letters Policy The Daily Nebraskan welcomes briefs, letters to the editor and guest columns, but does not guar antee their publication. The Daily Nebraskan retains the right to edit or reject any material submitted. Submitted material becomes property of the Daily Nebraskan and cannot be returned. Anonymous submissions will not be published. Those who submit letters must identify themselves by name, year in school, major and/or group affiliation, if any. Submit material to: Da*y Nebraskan, 20 Nebraska Union, 1400 R St Lincoln, NE 68588-0448. E mart: letters@unlinfo.unl.edu. Editorial Policy Unsigned editorials are the opinions of the Fall 2000 Daily Nebraskan. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, its employees, its student body or the University of Nebraska Board of Regents. A column is solely the opinion of its author; a cartoon is solely the oprnton of its artist. The Board of Regents acts as publisher of the Daily Nebraskan; poli cy is set by the Daily Nebraskan Editorial Board. The UNL Publications Board, established by the regents, supervises the production of the paper. According to policy set by the regents, responsi bility for the editorial content of the newspaper lies solely in the hands of its employees. {fS%a®l W -rHg IW/WO^L Uftstnz I /1 optHe wgw>S£*ual is a >\>co fmezrepftfo^M Ly.&■ i NealObermeyer/DN Misscarcrash I would like to respond to Mr. Hieb’s letter regard ing petaluma watson. While I certainly agree with his opinion of miss watson’s column, I had hoped there might be a more articulate and well-presented case. Rather than allowing his letter to dissolve into obscenities, Mr. Hieb might have pointed out miss watson’s atrocious grammar, which she excused piti fully by explaining that she is beautiful. He might also have mentioned her jolting writing style which has minimal flow and almost no continuity. There is also the fact that miss watson’s clumsy attempts at symbolism and obsession with pimples and her “hail damage” detract from her already prob lematic writing. watson’s contribution for this paper is a gimmick, and like all gimmicks, it will pass. Whoever created miss watson will probably not care about this article. Should miss watson actually exist in this vapid form, her egoism and narcissism will protect her from taking any of the negative commentary to heart. Perhaps if she attempted to present herself as less judgmental and with more depth, I would feel sympa thy for her insecurity. Instead, her column holds the same fascination for me as a car accident. I know that I should turn away and avoid the dis turbing images, but I can’t keep myself from looking because I want to know exacdy how bad it actually is. It truly is sad, I don’t care about her opinion, I just can’t believe that the DN is actually giving in to what this person wants - the most attention. Patricia Scott Senior Geology Scouts honor The DN editorial “Scouts blunder” contained so many holes it was nearly laughable, if it wouldn’t have been so incredibly sad. What tried to pass as an argu ment had no logical basis whatsoever. First, there was the description of the situation: “On one hand, on the other.” Both of these statements were the same thing: the Scouts losing some status because of their stance. It wasn’t a stating of both sides, merely the liberal, one-sided view. Next, the DN exemplified the same behavior for which it was chastising midland organizations: failure of another party to accept another’s views. The Scouts are expected to conform to a different view without considering the reverse. Finally, the DN used the age-old (but still wrong) argument of “do it because everyone's doing it.” I won der if the DN is also eagerly awaiting the murder and crime rates of our “more socially conscious coastal cousins”? And to top it off, they accuse the Midlands of hav ing no backbone. Funny, but I thought people who stood up against the crowd and pressure were usually applauded for their backbones. Perhaps the DN could actually put some thought into future arguments instead of just jumping on the cultural bandwagon. Jayson Bishop Senior Computer Engineering Scouts, Part II On the opinion page of Sept. 14, an opinion was expressed extolling the virtue of forcing the Boy Scouts of America to rescind its ban on allowing gays into its ranks. You know, I learned a long time ago that if I want ed to be a part of a group or organization, I had to accept and agree to abide by its chartered rules or I could not participate. Accordingly then, your opinion is now to require me to adopt your beliefs, even though I am not in sup port of them. I have nothing against gays, whites, blacks, creationists, evolutionists or others. Just don't require me to accep t its beliefs because I have opted to join a service-oriented organization such as the Boy Scouts of America. Discrimination? Maybe. But isn’t it my right to choose? Aren’t you suggesting the same thing? Discrimination against the Boy Scouts because they are not willing to adopt your belief? Mark Smith Lincoln Upholding the greek image Last year I arrived at UNL as a relatively naive freshman and allowed my mind to be inundat ed with the wonders and excite ments of a high-level institution. I lay prostrate before the stu dent body and shouted: Teach MmL } me! Show me the way!” ®,BI ‘ I wanted to experience it all Simon - the parties, the Chinese food, Ringsmuth the gratuitous Internet access at the union and of.course, the learning. It’s all about the learning. Or so they say. I had heard of the greek system in high school and rumors of endless parties where booze flowed like wine and condoms, both used and unused, littered the floor as if they were confetti at a parade. Frats were havens for immorality and studiousness both, as young men strove toward the only two things that mattered in life: scoring with chicks and passing final exams. Once in a ff at, you would still have your old friends to hang out with once a month or so, but now you would have brothers. TFue friends who stood by you through it all, no matter the consequences, provided your dues are paid up. cromers wouia never lei a mug run ary or a Keg go empty, and brothers would always be there if your girl friend of the week ran off with another guy before her time (or sexual usefulness to you) was used up. After a few days I decided to get up and actually experience life at UNL instead of keeping my old stereotypes about frats and college life in general, and besides, I was getting hungry. During the following months, my ideas and opin ions began to take shape and crystallize, and I learned much more about the ffat scene than I ever wanted to. And boy, was I ever wrong. Like I said, my ideas were just stereotypes with no basis in reality. I, just like any other precoilege guy, thought frats were about drinking and satisfying our oh-so-primal sexual urges like the animals we are, but this was nowhere near what I imagined. And I didn’t like it one bit. As it turned out, frats were mostly about the drinking. Frequent drinking. The concept of a three-day weekend (Thursday, Friday, Saturday), which meant three morning hang overs, was introduced to me, and I didn’t like it. When I heard frat guys talk in class, it would be about the same subjects every single time: how much they drank last weekend or the sordid details of their latest sexual escapades the week before. It began to disgust me, and I decided to take mat . • x ters into my own hands. I started my own fraternity. If I sound like I’m contradicting myself, read on faithful reader, for it will become clear momentarily. After explaining my plans to three of my closest friends (or, rather, three guys I knew with large-. enough bank accounts), we decided we would buy a house and make our fraternity official. My three new brothers and myself became the original members of Alpha Sigma Sigma fraternity. We would be a frat that broke the stereotypes and changed the negative image frats had gained through the years. Here at ASS we don’t practice the three-day weekend. We practice the five- and six-day weekend. The drinking isn’t frequent, it’s constant. Beer is. emitted from every faucet, socket and orifice in our building, thanks to a contract with Coors and our landlord. Once a month, for two days, we move out, and he moves in with the girls we supply for him, and in turn, our rent got lowered, and the extra taps were installed free-of-charge. We pour beer on our cereal, which is made, of course, from barley and hops. There are three faucets in the bathtub: warm water, wine and club soda. Like myself, my “brothers” were tired of the bad image that frats had. We gave frats a truly horrible image, and man, it’s so cool. Of course it drunkenness were all we had, wen, there wouldn’t be a whole lot of value to our frat. Anyone can go anywhere to get drunk, so at ASS, we created an entirely new atmosphere. Drinking isn’t encouraged, it’s mandatory. With that comes girls. And oh, what girls there are. Once the word got out about the booze supply, it didn’t take long for the usual sorority girls at UNL to take notice. By the fourth day of our frat’s existence, every member of ASS was scoring at least twice a night, five nights a week, and school wasn’t even in session yet. Now that the semester is in full swing, the potential of our frat is being realized to its fullest extent. No frat at UNL has a chance of competing any more, and their pathetic attempts at scoring with have been forever defeated. In fact, it’s difficult for me to write this with one girl quietly licking my toes and another fondling my ribcage, but I’m a true man as proven by my membership in ASS, so I can handle it. Let this, then, be a challenge to all the greek hous es at UNL: You’ve been outdone, so let’s see if you’ve got what it takes to really compete. Do you, like ASS, have enough balls to admit that you really don’t study any more than any “schmoe” in college, and that you really exist solely to provide insecure high-school jocks (often, as I’ve heard, with small genitalia) with a means of getting drunk, high and laid? Then prove it True artists would not fear Napster Life is based on copying. We copy DNA on the genetic level. Children copy the speech and behavior of par ent£ Monkey see, __ monkey do. S©an Copying, like Zehtab thinking and mmmmammmmm breathing, is an uhenumerated inalienable right To take it away would destroy the person. One could argue that even though it is in our nature to copy, restraining that urge under certain circumstances is in our best interest. In fact, the U.S. Constitution states that it is in the scope of legislative power “to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive rights to their respective writings and discoveries.” Entertainment and luxury do not qualify as “useful arts.” If people want to copy entertainment to use in their homes, they should have that right But we don’t have that right and liber ty in the new millennium because of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Passed in 1998, Congress said that the users of the Internet may not transmit copyrighted material, essential ly eliminating their nature to copy. For example, one could make a mixed tape or CD and give it to his or her friends - that’s legal or feir use. But to put that tape or CD on the Internet could be considered pirating - the claim currently against Napster. The argument that artists would not create art unless they were compensated with money, fails in front of the court of human nature. Good artists don’t make art to make money. Ever heard of the starving artist? Van Gogh didn’t make much money from his art, but it endured, and the originals are highly valued. Britney Spears, on the other hand, makes a lot of money, but she is not an artist, and her music will not endure. The same principle applies to inno vative science. The people working on cures for cancer and AIDS don’t go into it looking for a glorious lifestyle filled with fame and fortune. They do it because they have a pas sion for their work. Indeed, greed would stifle the progress of many scientific and technological endeavors because the monetary payoff is not immediate, if at all: The cure is still 10 years away while the skilled scientist could be making more money elsewhere. Artists used to make a living primari ly on patronage - commission paid on or before the completion of the work. That system produced some of the most won derful works man has ever created. We will benefit from laws that elimi nate copyrights and royalties because they place the emphasis back on patron age and face-to-face meetings. It would be a boon for local artists try ing to get heard over Big Music. Now, in the age of digital media, the medium is free, storage on hard drives is fairly inex pensive, and the production and distri bution of art is limited only by band width. Artists can now be heard without compromising their styles to fit into some bigwig's formula. Surf the Net, and see all the free art and music on places such as mp3.com and newgrounds.com. The list grows on and on. To sum up the Napster legal situa tion, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) forgot the age-old wis dom: Let sleeping dogs lie. When down loading mp3s was an elite activity, the harm to record companies was minimal. With all the free advertisement from the case, Napster usage boomed. With more than 20 million users on Napster, the educated class has shown it has no qualms pirating anything it can. Napster uses central servers to host users, making it vulnerable to legal action. This flaw created a demand for . alternative file-sharing utilities. Of those, Gnutella and Freenet are the most prom ising because the users are decentralized; and therefore, impossible to shut down. Ironically, in the midst of this revolu tion, the record industry reported increased profits. Perhaps it was the effect of price gouging: The RIAA settled out of court with the Federal Trade Commission in May. Now they are being sued for damages by 26 states. Copyrights have only been around since England instituted the Statute of Anne in 1710. Such laws were useful for a previous age, but harmful in this one. The blacksmith, the buggy whip maker and the pony express were rendered obsolete by progress in technology. Now we have special interests such as the Motion Picture Association of America, RIAA and Time Warner/America Online avoiding the invisible hand of the free market by buy ing the highly visible hand of govern ment. To progress further into the informa tion age we will need to get rid of DMCA and craft laws that are more in tune with human nature, freeing Americans to pur sue a more perfect union. -
