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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 6, 2000)
Opinion ZM/yNebraskan Since 1901 Editor. Sarah Baker Opinion Page Editor. Samuel McKewon Managing Editor Bradley Davis “I was going against Jon Vedral, and I was in the middle of the field, and he came back and cracked back on me. At the time I was talking, ‘I see the screen; here it comes/ and he gave me a real ear-hole shot, and I kind of bit my tongue. “That is something that I will never forget because he showed me that this is not high school. This is college football.” Nebraska linebacker Carlos Polk, on his indoctrination to college football “It's just supporting someone who openly supported hatred. To me, celebrating Columbus Day is like celebrating the person who assassinated Martin Luther King.” UNL senior Vernon Miller, on the necessity to change Columbus Day to American-Indian Day, a bill that was passed by ASUN Wednesday “It's another case of trying to pick a particu lar important historical holiday and saying it’s a sign of oppression. I think they’re searching around for someone to point a figure at, and Columbus was it” Emeritus history professor Edward Honze, on the passing of the ASUN bill “He kept trying to ride the coattails of the (Clinton) administration, but then at the end, he said, ‘I’m my own man.’ You need to decide - are you going to praise the administration or distance yourself from it? UNL freshman advertising major Michael Johnson on Presidential nominee A1 Gore’s performance in the first presidential debate “Bush was too quick to react with his one liners. I think Gore went back to the issues and stayed with his proposals to help citizens.” UNL sophomore business management major Jessiea Lopez on George Bush’s per formance during the same debate on Tuesday night “Folk music has endured because of the lyrics and the message. Typically, it’s about change and making things better. It has social relevance to people. It’s hot like some punk band that sings T hate you. I hate me.’ It’s catchy for a while, but then you grow up.” UNL music professor Tom Larson, on the music of folk legend Joan Baez, who per formed at the Lied Center Thursday night You read Cosmopolitan, People and Jane. You smile and use your eyes to talk about so and-so. If that doesn’t work, you write notes about it Because this is important, and it can’t wait until after class. Then you pass a crossword puzzle around. Not just pass, but slide it six feet across the floor back and forth to each other. You fill in a word and pass it on again. Do you share the same brain? Is it too hard to do a crossword puzzle alone? Or just too inde pendent? Columnist Emily Moran, on unruly stu dents in classes “Now that I’ve moved off campus, I realized that bikers are a menace to society at large, not just campus. I drive to school almost every day now, and this scene repeats itself over and over. There are two lanes, one with parked cars; the other with traffic slowed because of a moron on a bike, pedalin’ his hardest but still barely cracking 20 miles per hour. Then as the person slowly inches toward the curb to let you pass, he looks at you with what I like to call the ‘biker glare.’” Columnist Tony Bock, on why he hates bik ers. Editorial Board Sarah Baker, Bradley Davis, Josh Funk, Matthew Hansen, Samuel McKewon, Dane Stickney, Kimberly Sweet Letters Policy The Dafy Nebraskan welcomes briefs, letters to the editor and guest columns, but does not guar antee their pubScadon. The Daly 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 wi not be published. Those who submit letters must identify themselves by name, year in school, major anchor group affiliation, if any. Submit material to: Daly Nebraskan, 20 Nebraska Union, 1400 R St Lincoln, NE 68588-0448. E maH: tetteraOuninfo.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 Unlverafly of Nebraska Board of Regents. A column is solely the opinion of its author; a cartoon is solely the opinion of fls artist The Board of Regents acts as publisher of the Daily Nebraskan; po* 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, response bity for the eOHorial content of the newspaper les solely in the hands of its employees. THIS BUNK SPACE REPRESENTS "THE UTTER PACK OF THOUGHT W AS UN’S CHOICE TO RENAME “COLUMBUS PAY* "AMERICAN INDIAN PAY " MAP ANYONE BEEN RAYINGATTENTION, THEY MAY HAVE NffTEP THAT "INDIAN" WAS THE TERM &VEN 1STHEM 6Y COLUMBUS HlMsecf. WAY To &0. C la&o NealObenneyer/DN I Killing Columbus I would like to congratulate ASUN on doing some thing totally impractical. I think Presidents Day is the next offensive holiday that needs to be dealt with because Washington owned slaves and Lincoln never wanted to free the slaves. Maybe the former president’s accomplish ments are deemed more important than those of Columbus so we can sweep their faults under the mg. \s ASUN President Joel Schafer said, the Columbus Day resolution was a way for ASUN to show support for minorities. Well, I will be watching forthe Presidents Day Resolutionon the ASUN Senate docket soon. Andrew Harken graduate student mechanical engineering Anevenbiggerinsult In response to the article “Explorer Holiday Canned,” I would like to ask what gave ASUN the right to drop a national holiday? Secondly, why didn’t I know about this before today? First, I don’t think it’s ASUN's job to decide what holidays this university celebrates. Columbus Day is a national holiday, so therefore, I think it’s the nation’s job to decide this matter, not the student government Also, renaming it “American-Indian Day” is more of an insult Why should we celebrate American Indians on a day which has traditionally been reserved to celebrate an oppressor? I do think the American Indians deserve a holiday, but I don’t think we should try to right a wrong this way. I think ASUN needs to do a better job of reporting what’s going on at their meetings. Since they are the student government, I think that perhaps a detailed minutes synopsis and an agenda for upcoming meet ings should be put in the DN. If you want student involvement how about put ting your info in a place where every student will see it? Makes sense, don’t you think? RyanMinert junior computer sdence Big decision makers Apparently our student government doesn’t have enough to do. While disparaging the most famous explorer in world history for views that he held 400 years ago apparently is at the top of our esteemed Senator’s agendas, it really is quite out of step with most of their constituents. Faced with an impending tuition hike, a universi ty that cannot keep its leaders, a parking nightmare and host of other problems, it occurs to a novice like me that they might try tackling those problems. While we are all astonished at their uncanny abili ty to make snap judgments on people who changed the world, maybe vthey should focus on our problems. I know making social policy and pretending it matters is fun, but we could sure use their help on matters that are important to us. A special thank you to Vernon Miller who com pared Christopher Columbus to Martin Luther King’s assassin. Next time, you might not want to compare apples and oranges. Jason Klindt graduate student business administration Shop-Vac bests the Dank “Dude, what did you do to the shower?” my fellow frat member Evan asked me the other day. Oblivious to what he was referring to, I went into the bathroom and looked in the direction of his pointing fin- Simon "Whoa.” The bathroom Ringsmuth was sopping wet, evidently " from when I had just taken a shower. I had seen this happen a few times in the past weeks. I was too sheepish to admit that it could be because I have this habit of aiming the shower head at the shower curtain, which makes a sound like attacking fighter jets, while I flail about the confines of the grey brick walls pretending I’m a World War II gunner heroically saving the day and rinsing off my conditioner at the same time. I knew that wasn’t the problem this time, as I had showered as fast as possible after getting my hair cut and was eagerly awaiting for any number of girls to call, begging for a date. This sort of thing doesn’t happen very often, but in case it did, I wanted to be ready with my new hair all freshly moussed and shampooed. Evan ran to the doorway of our small down stairs bathroom and wouldn't let me past until I promised to help him fix the shower drain, which was not really a drain at all anymore, so the water would stop flowing out into the rest of the bath room. Our plan: Go to my dad's house and get his 1970s-era Shop-Vac. The good fellows at Sears sure knew how to build ’em. In fact, just a month ago we used the same Shop-Vac to clean the neighbor’s dog and our gutters in the same day. We returned in 12 minutes flat and figured this job would take about the same amount of time. I jammed the hose down the hole and sucked and sucked until there was no water left in the shower drain, the toilet, the upstairs toilet, or the sink at which Ross, another frat member, was doing dishes. Triumphant, we hiked up our britches and let out manly sighs and grunted while scratching our privates, after which we dumped the sludge in the alley and gave ourselves high-fives. We trooped back downstairs where I started the water and watched it come out in yellowish, grainy spurts as it usually does in our top-notch rental house-tumed-fratemity. We marveled at how it all went down the drain. And came right back up. OK, so we lost that round. But we would not let the house get the best of us. Evan theorized that the water was seeping through a crack into the storage room just on the other side of the wall and from there, draining back through the wall in front of the shower. If you live in a dorm or an apartment you prob ably don’t know what I’m talking about, but inside every house is a room nobody dares enter for fear of their own life. Ours is located, like many are, in the basement. A little Jerusalem’s Lot right under the stairway. We have quietly ignored this storage room for nearly three months and had hoped it could just stay Idee that for the duration of our rental contract. There are forces in the storage room that mortals and frat members should not tamper with, but when faced with a test of manhood, we could not back down. Evan and I stood there forlorn, face-to-face with our worst nightmare since a wolf spider the size of a salad bowl showed up near Evan’s comput er the first week we moved in. Slowly the knob turned. And the door opened. Our worst fears were confirmed. Inside, we dis covered The Dank - the source of all foulness and horridness in the world was right on the other side of the wall from the shower and behind the door we had just opened. Wearing knickers and hard hats, we shone flashlights into the darkness but could see nothing. There was only smell. We were true men, and after chugging a bottle of lemon-lime Pucker each, we turned on the Shop-Vac and had at it. Ross, having no water left in the sink, came down to help, armed with Gold Bond medicated powder. Nic sat on his computer downloading Dave Matthews MP3s, swearing he’d be out any minute. To this day, he has yet to come out. I was the first to enter, taking the Shop-Vac with me. After finding the pull-string for the lone ceiling light, Evan screamed from the outer world, in his best Scottish accent, “The huuse! The huuse! Grreb et bye th’ nuuzle!” I scooped up the business end of the Shop-Vac and sucked like I had never sucked before. Decaying cardboard boxes, brick chunks, mud, cobwebs as big as hammocks, a full two inches of standing water that had leaked in from the shower during the past two months since the drain first got clogged - it all ended up safely inside the big red container part of the Shop-Vac that looked like the Kool-Aid man on wheels. Nearly an hour passed, and we carted most of the junk in the storage room outside to the curb where it sat until this morning when our faithful garbage men took it back to the depths of the earth from whence it had come. The downstairs has been completely off-limits since then, and Target has this big hole on the shelf where their Plug-Ins air fresheners used to be. We sealed up the crack in the shower and boarded up the entrance to the storage room, and though our shower drain is still clogged, we have managed to keep the forces of darkness at bay. And that’s good enough for us. Learning to trust, with small things I glance at the dashboard clock: 7:55 a.m. The tour nament starts at 8. There’s no way to make it up the mountain on time. My co-pilot is lean-* ing back in his seat smiling at me, a Betsy Severn smile that says, “What are you worrying about?” I’m looking out the windshield at the road ahead, but I can’t see past the eight miles of Pike's Peak National Forest’s wind ing gravel road back to Eagle Lake, the 30 mile per hour speed limit or the fear that our team will be disqualified and my mad rush in a borrowed car from Colorado Springs will be in vain. As if that would be such a terrible thing. Our team is the only female team competing in our staff basketball tourna ment We were so sure of our elimination that we named the team “Jehovah’s Jalopies.” My wheels hi* gravel, and I have a choice to make. Maybe it’s the fear of my father’s disappointment when he hears I got a speeding ticket, or maybe it’s the inability of my conscience to justify break ing any laws, but I never speed. Ever. Especially on winding, gravel mountain roads. With a sheepish glance at my pas senger, I kick it up to a mere 10 miles over. We make it through the first set of sui cide curves and get to the long stretch of straight road. As we go down into the val ley, I muse once again that this looks more like Ireland than Colorado; that this must be one of the most beautiful places on earth. But I am now officially late. My pas senger is shaking his head and chuckling quietly. I pull up in front of the gym and burst out of the car. I see though the doors two guys warming up. I ask where everyone is at “Eating breakfast,” they say. “The tour nament doesn’t start until 8:30.” As I cross the road to the dining hall in search of my fellow Jalopies, my Mend gets out of the car and walks with me. “Silly girl, you didn’t need to speed,” he says. “Why don’t you let me drive next time?” *** On a clear, sunny day like today, you can see all of camp from atop Raven’s Crag, a rocky mountain top. I look out over Eagle Lake, shaped more like a deformed chick en. I look at my watch. Once again I have a very short time to go a very long distance: My end-of-the-summer evaluation with Ryan is at the bottom of the mountain in 20 minutes. I was bom a day late and it seems I never quite caught up. I bid the group goodbye and start dowjn the mountain. My mind ponders going home; the all-day drive that will happen this weekend, the hectic following week that will consist of moving back in, then classes, my least favorite part of col lege. Then I realize I have come to that Certain Part of the Trail - that part where you can’t tell which way it technically goes. The grass is thin on both sides. I pick a way and hope for the best. After about 50 feet, I conclude that this trail, in fact, isn’t one at all. I have a choice: I can climb backup to where I got off the trail or I can keep forging downward, something we’re really not supposed to do. Of course I opt for the latter, brush scratching up my tanned legs, hoping the fallen trees underneath me won't break. It takes forever, but it's still faster than the trail, right? Toward the bottom I have to jump over a stream. I fall and hit my back on the rocks. Fortunately, the $4,000 video camera that, as the camp videographer, I carry in my backpack breaks my fall. I limp out of the bushes and start on the road back to camp. Behind me, the group is just com ing off the trail. I might as well have stayed and walked with them, for all the time I saved. I run into the office five minutes late. Ryan stops his conversation long enough to ask me if we can reschedule our appointment, as he’d forgotten about it and agreed to meet with someone else during that time. I can see my friend over his shoulder, struggling to keep a straight face. *** My friend and I take a walk around the lake the last night of camp. Somewhere on the property a bunch of girls are hanging out together in pajamas, eating popcorn and talking about the summer. I want to be among them, but that will have to wait My friend and I walk in silence. I’ve trusted him to provide money for me to afford to work out here this summer. I’ve trusted him with my love life. I’ve trusted him with my salvation. Why can't I trust him in the stupid little details that creep up every day? *** My bags are packed. I’m sitting out of the front porch of my building as the car pulls up. We pack the trunk so tight I’m afraid it will burst open, strewing cotton balls and dirty socks all over 1-80. My friend tries to hand me the keys, but I refuse. “I’m going to try letting you drive.”