T
Opinion
£ta//yNebraskan
Since 1901
Editor Sarah Baker
Opinion Page Editor Samuel McKewon
Managing Editor Bradley Davis
Think twice
Students should take
advantage of HIV testing
Ignorance can be deadly.
College is a time of exploring, expanding
horizons and finding our place in the world.
Some students go in search of the endless
party, while others decide to stay home.
Along the way, some of us make good deci
sions, but most of us have made a few bad
ones, too. We may have learned valuable les
sons from those bad choices, but there are
also consequences to those decisions.
Those nights of excess or episodes of poor
judgment bear potentially lethal effects that
cannot be ignored.
That is why it was shocking to learn that
students on this campus seemed uninterest
ed in a new free and anonymous HIV testing
center on campus.
At Big Red Welcome, some students who
received the testing flyers promptly trashed
them, declaring that they didn’t have to worry
about HIV because they’re not gay.
At Big Red
Welcome
some
students
who
received th
testing
flyers
promptly
trashed
them,
declaring
that they
didn’t have
to worry
about HIV
because
they’re not
gay. No
one,
repeat NO
ONE, is
immune
from HIV c
the disease
it causes:
AIDS.
a No one, repeat NO ONh, is
immune from HIV or the dis
ease it causes: AIDS.
Scientists knew that in 1982
when they renamed the Gay
Related Immune Deficiency
(GRID) because the Acquired
e Immune Deficiency Syndrome
was proven to affect everyone.
Today, women and teen
agers are the fastest growing
HIV-positive groups.
If any of us have put our
selves at risk through our
lifestyles or a single bad deci
sion, we must get tested
because more than our own
lives are at stake.
If there is any chance that we
may have been infected
through some of the risks we’ve
taken, we owe it to ourselves
and our sexual partners to be
tested for HIV.
Students on our campus
seem to know the acronyms
associated with this disease,
but not the details of what puts
r them at risk.
Unprotected sex, either
vaginal or anal, is the most
common way to contract HIV,
but it can also be contracted
through oral sex.
Blood-to-blood contact through intra
venous drug use, unsanitary tattoo needles or
other means is another serious risk.
If you don’t know what activities put you at
risk for HIV, find out. At http://www.the
body.com you can take an anonymous survey
that will help identify any risky behavior.
If you have concerns, get help and more
information either at the University Health
Center or the free testing center held at
Cornerstone church on the second and
fourth Fridays of each month.
Above all, don’t risk your life or the lives of
others foolishly. Know the risks and get test
ed.
Editorial Board
Sarah Baker, Bradley Davis, Josh Funk, Matthew Hansen,
Samuel McKewon, Dane Stickney, Kimberly Sweet
Letters Policy
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Submit material to: Daily Nebraskan, 20 Nebraska Union, 1400 R St. Lincoln, NE 68588-0448. E
mail: 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 opinion 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
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Abel Ally?
I found the staff opinion column, “Hollow
Meaning,” that ran in the Daily Nebraskan on Sept 27
very offensive, making a gross generalization of stu
dents in Abel Hall
From what I gather from the column is that any
one who lives in a "party dorm” cannot support a safe
environment for homosexuals. This is a ridiculous
notion. I, along with others, have had an “Ally Safe
Space” card on my door for the past three years in
Abel.
That said, as a student living in Abel, I am
opposed to the Abel Residence Association’s bill to
place an "AT .TV Safe Space” card on their office door. I
think ARA should serve as a representation of the stu
dents in that dorm. Even though I support a safe envi
ronment, I do not think most students in Abel believe
in what the “ALLY Safe Space” card and the upside
down pink triangle mean.
What I am highly offended by is that I, along with
other students with similar beliefs, were clumped into
a group known as "partyers” who are involved in
“alcohol-induced vomiting.” That kind of behavior,
which does not exist on the level the column may
make people believe, has nothing to do with whether
or not I want to make my living area a safe space for
homosexuals or anyone else.
Jay Saunders
Senior
Broadcasting
Frame by frame, her name
Hopelessly lost within my
own infatuation, I see
Volleyball, frame by frame.
11:37 a.m. - A strand of
hair plops into her face. She
brushes it back, placing bear
the top of the pith helmet.
11:37.35-Sheleans back . .
in her chair. She sighs. petalUITia
11:38.23 - She scootches WatSOn
back up in the chair again,
plops her right hand to direct
ly below her chin and, closes her eyes and lets out one
of those burps nobody hears. Musta drank a soda this
morning.
11:41—She twaddles her swish-swish pants, look
ing off and to her right, the direction of recollection,
thinking of someone, twaddling, thinking of his
penis, or her vagina (as if I would know at this
moment).
11:52.3 - Speaks for the first time, regarding her
misunderstanding of Hemingway’s iceberg, the short
story mantra he stuck to for most of his career.
A story is an iceberg, he would say, as the words
that make it on paper comprise that ice that resides
above water, while the remainder is the back story, all
the questions you know the answers to, all the bloody
secrets and pimples and dark corridors that
congeal to produce one line of dia
logue.
All the pain, the time and
hurt, the lies and guts, the
hail damage, the tiny
secluded moments of
dreamt-up scorn that
plug the holes in your
brain - this is the ice
berg.
Volleyball doesn’t
get it. I’ve heard the /
athletic department
provides test banks for
them to scour over, thus
producing the desired
grade in the desired class,
thus granting them what I
got the missing sphere. A comment of reassurance
would do Teach good.
12:23.29 - Close up on Volleyball now, I see the
remnants of scratches on her neck, tiny brown skid
marks ready to sink back into the skin. I see her lips,
dried and skinned over, little folds tucked into the
fleshy part of them. She spies me looking, I think, and
purses her lips inward to moisturize. I see her ears,
smaller than mine. Her hair, a tangled mess.
I see it all, and all at once, from 14 inches away.
The screen widens and opens to the universe, the
clutter moves and pops behind her. I imagine her
face, backlit by the sun, against a dock, not lost, but
clearly seen, wind blowing hard, strands wisping her
face, holding to the skin, then releasing, whirling
around her in chaos. The scenes fold upon my eyes
like those hairs. Just like Nadia said.
I am an orbit in her solar system, my pulse not
bum-bum, bum-bum bum-bum bum-bum bum
bum but bum bum bum bum bum, like a constant
timpani drum awaking to the echoes of a dead-zone
ritual. Her move has a rhythm, and I’m inside it.
“Did you need something?" Teach draws me out
with her voice, which bangs against the air like forks
bang against tin prison plates.
Just wanted to tell you, I say in sweet prose, that I
will most definitely have that sphere of influence next
go-around. I keep it short, and even that isn’t
quite enough, because Volleyball
turned to leave, head down and
scooting fast, and I feel like a
slingshot, going too far
around the moon to get
back again. Teach is talking
to me, giving a short, tin- -
banging lecture about
how many points she’ll
have to deduct and
i don’t care!
And I nod my head
profusely, clasp her wrist
and smile a “I gotta go”
and turn. Volleyball is
finding her way up the
, stairs and I can not not not
not not run because that will
tmnkiscaiiea eligibility to play iook so stupid out in wane nice inis
their little games. The iceberg wasn't Megan Cody/DN and meander up these stairs then I’ve
in the test bank, it seemed. got to plan an angle to intercept her.
11:59.34 - She turns to a classmate to ask an
innocuous question.
12:01 p.m. - Another question.
12:05 -IWaddles the swish-swish pants again.
12:08.59 -Yawns
12:12.14 - Rolls her eyes at the analysis of the
spheeermrre ofinnnnnfluenccce.
As class ends, Jaime has chipped away the
remainder of her Dum-Dum and we turn our sepa
rate ways. She goes to the library to study and sleep; I,
to the union. Today, the plan changes.
The zipper trick you learn as a girl in high school,
how to manipulate your zipper to either zip quickly
(PULL! PULL! PULL1) or meander it across your back
pack, maybe open it up a few times just to check that
you’ve got all your stuff.
You do this to make time move or stall it, in this
case, for me, I want to stall it, because Volleyball packs
like new ketchup pours, before heaving the bag on
her shoulder like there’s a load of curling stones in it.
I pick up a stray pen from the desk to the left of me,
and search uselessly for a pocket cranny to stick it in.
She’s still phullumping across the room. Now she
wants to ask the teacher a question.
12:22.56 -1 read the mouthed words of “out-of
town.” Teach shakes her head. Pats Volleyball on the
back. I search my purse for a stick of sugarless gum. In
vain.
12:23.15 - It becomes painfully clear that in order
to follow Volleyball out, and possibly muster up my
crappy courage to say something entirely meaning
less and fawning (because I am deep, deep, deep in
artist inspiration here), I must ask the teacher a use
less question of my own, except I have none, wait! I ’ve
Instant obsession is like a geometnc trap ot logic.
So I do that hard half jog in the opposite direction,
dodging who I can, my change jingling in backpack
mesh pocket, praying to whatever God that my
hunch that she’ll go toward the volleyball courts plays
out and guys are squinting their eyes and girls are
rolling theirs at the pretty, pretty girl, in hurry for
nothing they’re sure.
I hit the outside and see her nearly parallel with
me, heading in the right direction, about 100 feet
away from, and now there's a new quandary, as in:
How do I look pedestrian and still make a casual bee
line that intercepts her before it’s too late? A droplet of
goo plops off my forehead. I’m sweating.
I feel so stupid, time stopping right in this
moment for me to feel that way, naked and alone
watching some girl in swish-swish pants make her
way to practice, or whatever.
I think of the hole in language Nadia told me
about, where there’s an absence for explanation for
the emotion, where everything blurs and there’s just
you and whatever.
12:24.27-1 close my eyes and the clutter pops yel
low, purple, yellow. And whatever God help me, I am
overwhelmed with the most self-centered, pukiest
thought I’ve ever conjured up in my brain.
So this is what it must be like to look at me.
12:25.34 - And I so give my obsession of myself a
name, this silent subject that has become my imme
diate muse:
Calgary Johnson.
This is her name. This is my icon. And her letters
blast with the trademark of a girlish script, forged with
a purple pen, half print/half cursive.
Two people,
two cultures,
one fortune
Steven and “
Denise are
friends of mine,
and they are a
couple who have
been married in
Lincoln tor 10
years.
They’re Leslie
happy. But, peo- OWUSU
pie always seem
to stare at them
because they’re an interracial couple.
But the stares don’t worry them.
What keeps this couple so happy is
their strong love for each other.
In an ideal world where multicul
turalism is fully evident, we should all
embrace the idea of cultural differ
ences, and society would not have a
problem with Steven and Denise being
together.
We would all be color blind if we
accepted interracial relationships. But
we all don’t.
I can relate to why some people
think that Steven and Denise should
not be together.
Like some people who are against
interracial relationships, I used to have
, a problem with interracial relation
vships when I was younger. I had pre
conceived notions that racial groups
should stay within their groups.
Even though most of my friends
were white, I still had a problem with
the idea of a white person dating a
black person or any combination of
different races dating.
I questioned why anyone would
want to date, or even marry, outside
their race. It seemed to me that interra
cial dating was just not worth the long
term problems because society does
not accept it.
But who am I - or anyone else - to
judge and decide who a person should
be with?
Steven and Denise chose to be
together, and they do not see their rela
tionship as anything different.
My perceptions of interracial dat
ing relationships have changed
through my observations as I have
matured.
iviy aunt Ddiudid icii 111 iuvc aiiu
married a German man several years
ago. Initially, we were all quite sur
prised. But my family accepts my aunt’s
significant other. My family does not
look at him as different because he is
white. He is simply my aunt's husband,
and he is a wonderful man who treats
his wife like a queen.
Seeing how happy my aunt and
uncle are made me realize that it really
shouldn’t matter what color a person is
when it comes to relationships and
love. They make their relationship
work, like Steven and Denise do. Just
like any other couple.
My brother’s girlfriend is white and
my brother does not see his relation
ship as anything unusual or different.
He says that as long as he is happy with
his woman, that’s all that matters.
Looking at interracial relationships
from the perspective of my own family
has made me recognize that there is no
problem with interracial relationships.
Nobody should have to sacrifice
anything to be with the person they
lnvp
Interracial relationships can work.
I realize the many problems and
barriers facing interracial couples -
such as my aunt and uncle, my brother,
Steven and Denise - may encounter,
like raising a family.
It is very important that when chil
dren are involved, interracial couples
should allow their children to under
stand and celebrate both cultures.
Steven and Denise do not see race
or color as a barrier. Instead, they
embrace their differences.
Society should not feel that it is a
problem if Steven and Denise choose to
be together. It only becomes a problem
if people choose to make it one.
Interracial couples are simply two
humans who love each other. In order
for a relationship like this to work, both
cultures and families need to under
stand each other.
What makes Steven and Denise’s
relationship work is that they have
honesty, trust and acceptance of each
other.
For this couple, racial differences
are not an issue.
In order for interracial relationships
to work, people need to be more open
and accept that we are all the same. We
are all a part of the human race.
Today, the U.S. is racially integrated
more than ever. The number of interra
cial couples is increasing every day.
When it comes to love, color should
not be a factor. Steven and Denise
prove that interracial relationships can
work.
My aunt and uncle and my brother
show that different races can be in love
and be truly happy.
Everyone should have the right and
freedom to be with whom they choose,
regardless of race. Others have to
respect that.