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surrounded
media's haste
■The quick announcement of president on
election night may have been caused by the fierce
clashes between television and radio stations.
BY GEORGE GREEN
On election night, the media stumbled
between wrong calls, recalls and no-calls of the
presidential election.
Now that the Nov. 7 fervor has calmed, even
though the United States still doesn't have an
executive, people are beginning to question the
media’s role in the election night mayhem.
Congress is looking into the reasons why the
television networks were hasty to declare a pres
idential winner in each state.
In particular, allegations of wrongdoing have
plagued the Fox Network, which had an employ
ee related to Gov. George W. Bush who was
involved with vote predictions and reportedly
gave the Republican presidential candidate’s
campaign tips on election returns.
Carroll Doherty, the editor of the Pew
Research Center for People and the Press, one of
the foremost groups that studies the media, said
questions about the media’s election coverage
were backed by widespread public outrage
aimed at the media’s policies.
“There is a high degree of unhappiness with
the media,” he said.
The Pew group recently completed a public
opinion survey that showed 87 percent of
Americans feel the media should not make early
projections as to which candidate wins a state
based on exit polling.
It also showed that eight in 10 Americans feel
the networks made incorrect calls on election
night because they were too consumed with a
need to be first.
Bob Hopkins, a spokesman for Bush, said the
Bush campaign hoped the public discontent
would force the media into reevaluating their
policies and procedures.
Bush isn’t sure how the miscalls affected the
election, Hopkins said, but he feels like the
Please see POLL on 3
Retiring Ui.
Sen. Bob Kerrey
(right) talks
with Shannon
Bonnessand
RkkBonnessof
Omaha Saturday
night at a dinner
Kerrey held to
thank hb con
stituents. More
than I^XX) peo
ple came to the
buffet held at
the SAC Museum
in Ashland.
David dasen/DN
Kerrey:Thank you,farewell
BY BRIAN CARLSON
ASHLAND — Retiring Sen. Bob
Kerrey thanked his constituents in
grand fashion Saturday night, saying
they had helped him craft laws to
improve people's lives.
About 1,000 people, Democrats
and Republicans, showed up for a din
ner at the Strategic Air Command
Museum in Ashland to show their
appreciation for Kerrey, who will leave
the Senate in January after serving two
terms.
“Tonight I have a simple two-word
message: Thank you,” Kerrey said.
“The list of things I've done by myself is
short. The list of things I’ve done with
other people is quite long.”
Kerrey, a Democrat, served as gov
emor from 1983-87. He was elected to
the Senate in 1988 and was re-elected
in 1994. In between, he ran unsuccess
fully for the Democratic presidential
nomination in 1992.
Upon leaving office in January, he
will become president of the New
School University in New York City.
Dining on chicken and roast beef,
and seated at tables adorned with red,
white and blue balloons, the crowd
packed the hall to hear Kerrey bid
farewell.
Kerrey presented a video about his
12 years in the Senate, focusing mostly
on the things Nebraska accomplished
through a partnership between citi
zens and government: crop insurance,
creation of scenic areas along the
state’s rivers, construction of the
George W. Beadle Center on the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln cam
pus and other accomplishments.
“My hope is that 100 years from
now, people will be able to look back
on our little 12-year period of time and
say we wrote laws that made life better
not just for us, but for our posterity,” he
said.
Kerrey said a U.S. senator has
tremendous power to write laws and
improve people’s lives. If people
focused more on the good work public
servants do, he said, it would be “an
antidote to the toxic cynicism that says
our democracy is not worth celebrat
• „ »
mg.
Please see KERREY on 7
DavtdOasen/DN
U.S. Sen. Bob Kerrey thanks everybody
who helped and supported him during
his career in Nebraska politics Saturday
night at the SAC Museum. Kerrey
accepted a job as president of the New
School University in New York earlier
this year.
BY TOBY MANTUEY
Rokeya Sultana’s 15-year-old
daughter saw snow for the first
time last Thursday.
Monsoons and mustard fields
spring up more often in the moth
er and daughter’s homeland.
Sultana, a professor and
award-winning artist from
Bangladesh, is visiting the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
until Dec.l in an exchange with
the University of Dhaka. She will
create artwork and teach print
making in the Nelle Cochrane
Woods Art building.
Karen Kune, a UNL art profes
sor, said her students will benefit
from having Sultana’s “fresh eyes
look at their work and work in
their midst”
Sultana’s art incorporates tra
ditional symbols, Eastern reli
gious concepts and familial and
feminist themes.
a major senes m aunanas
oeuvre is her “Madonna” series,
which she said her daughter,
Laura, inspired. Raphael and
Boticelli painted Madonnas fea
turing Mary and Jesus, but
Sultana’s mother-and-child prints
are different
“It's a classical theme, but put
into (the context of) every con
temporary woman's mind and
life,” lime said.
Often, the mother and daugh
ter are seeped in red tones, which
Sultana said represents the love
and struggle of motherhood. In
some prints, the mother and child
travel in a rickshaw, a small car
riage pulled by men.
“I tried to show a mother
holding her daughter’s hand, try
ing to take her into a better
world,” Sultana said.
She said this journey is neces
sary because Bangladeshi women
face low literacy rates and a 20
percent employment rate outside
the home.
Sultana, who works in several
mediums, also created an “Earth,
Water and Land” landscape series
of paintings, which are large
abstract expanses of murky gray
and pure, cadmium-yellow paint
“If you've seen Bangladesh,
E- t'jv lY
you wouldn’t feel this work was
abstract,” Sultana said. “The mus
tard fields look totally yellow.”
Sultana was bom in 1958 in
Chittagong, Bangladesh. Her
father was a superintendent for
the Bangladeshi police and a free
dom fighter in the Bangladesh
Liberation War of 1971.
Her husband, Rumy, plays
professional cricket for the
Bangladesh National Team.
In 1999, Sultana won the
Bengal Foundation’s national
award for best work and received
honorable mention at the Ninth
Asian Art Biennial to "thunderous
applause,” said Kune, the sole U.S.
representative at the event
Her works hang in the
Bangladesh National Museum,
the Universal Graphic Museum in
Courtesy Photos
Visiting Bangladeshi artist Rokeva Sultana works on a woodcarving titled "Man and Woman in the Sun."
Cairo, Egypt, and are among other
collections worldwide.
“I think (Sultana) is very cut
ting edge, especially for the coun
try she's from," said Kathy Puzey, a
UNL graduate printmaking stu
dent.
Puzey, who visited
Bangladesh last year, said artists
there are dealing with “basic, sur
vival” issues. Considering this, she
said, it’s surprising that Sultana's
work is so sophisticated.
Sultana studied Daoism and
Zen as a graduate student at
Vishwa Bharati University in
Shantiniketan, India. Because of
this, she said, she tries to achieve a
. . . .5.- 'v.-.- ‘
A
Bangladesh artist brings scenery
of homeland to plains of Nebraska
state of “zero mind while paint
ing.
She said this approach makes
painting a kind of conversation
with her canvas.
“When we start a conversa
tion with someone, sometimes we
don’t know where it will go,”
Sultana said.
An important concept in
Daoism is “yin and yang,” or the
play of opposites.
Sultana sees painting in this
light
“If the brush is yin, the ink is
yang,” she said. “Or if the brush is
yin, the paper is yang. Itoo pow
ers mix and make another energy.
Sometimes the canvas takes (an
image) out of you.”
Besides Daoism, Sultana has
also studied and taught art histo
ry, but resists its influence on her
work.
“Now I want to forget every
thing," she said. “If something is
really true, people will accept it”
Lincolnite
fights strife
in Somalia
BY JOSH FUNK
The only known copy of war
torn Somalia's legal code is in
Lincoln with Gary Hill, who has
taken time away from his scrap
yard business to help the African
republic restore the rule of law.
A world map covers one wall
of Hill's CEGA Services office from
floor to ceiling with small, yellow
pins marking the places he has
been.
Hill downplays his role as a
consultant with the United
Nations and international crimi
nal justice organizations, and says
he helps nations establish a crim
inal justice system and train
guards and police.
"I’m basically a secretary,” Hill
said. “I compile (information) so
they can do their jobs.”
Hill became involved with
prison reforms in the 1960s when
he started a program at the
Nebraska State Penitentiary. Later
he became involved nationally
and internationally.
Over the years, Hill has written
43 different training manuals for
prison and police in more than 50
countries. Hill first went to
Somalia with the U.S.- and UN
led intervention in the early 1990s.
Those troops failed to disarm war
ring factions and bring peace to
the country, and they left after sev
eral U.S. soldiers were killed.
Somalia’s infrastructure has
been decimated by a decade
without any central government
where warlords ruled regions of
the country and fought for control
of the capitol, Mogadishu, and
what was the sole port city, Merca.
For example, Hill said there
Please see SOMALIA on 7