A tribute to John Lennon;
20 years after Ms murder,
fans remember his impad
In Arts/8
Friday
December 8,2000
Volume 100
Issue 73
dailyneb.com
Since 1901
Daily Nebraskan
%/
Lincoln fifth grader cooks
her way to New York with
In News/5
Last year’s star player,
Nancy Meendering,
watches NU fight for No. 1
-without her.
In SportsWeekend/12
Great Platte River Archway Monument celebrated, criticized
■One critic says the Kearney museum's
architecture detracts from the history it
is meant to portray.
BY BRADLEY DAVIS AND
GEORGE GREEN
When President Clinton sets foot in
the Great Platte River Archway
Monument on Friday, some
Nebraskans say he will be exploring a
grand museum.
But at least one archway critic
remains steadfast in his opposition to
the monument.
Assistant General Manager of the
arch, Ronnie O’Brien, said no matter
what some detractors say, most visitors
leave the arch in awe.
“It’s a very powerful experience,"
she said.
O’Brien said articles in local papers
rave about the arch’s technologically
advanced displays.
Barbara Clark, group sales coordi
nator for the arch, said the $60 million
monument fuses infrared technology,
modern audio systems, Western arti
facts and murals into a genuine experi
ence of what the Old West used to be
like.
“You get the feeling like you’re real
ly there,” she said.
Visitors put on radio headsets
before they traverse the arch, Clark
said. And, when they enter new
exhibits, infrared sensors trigger the
displays to begin their presentations.
Some exhibits place visitors in the
heart ofWestem lightning storms while
others bring them face to face with
stampeding buffalo, she said.
When visitors aren’t dodging buf
faloes, Clark said, they are listening to
cast figures describe life on the prairie.
“It's so fabulous that it’s beyond
words," she said.
Kearney Mayor Pete Kotsiopulos
said the arch also is bolstering local
economies.
Preliminary sales tax numbers and
motel booking figures show that the
arch is helping Kearney businesses, he
said.
Moreover, he said, the arch’s posi
tive repercussions will ripple across the
state.
If visitors stop at the arch for even
an hour or two, he said, they are more
likely to stay in a hotel in Lincoln or
Omaha that night.
But, Kotsiopulos said, the figures he
has are only preliminary, and he
expects more good news from the
monument.
"We only know the tip of the ice
berg,” he said.
Kotsiopulos said I
the arch’s historical ft
value is equally as I
important as its I
financial benefits.
Visitors will I
learn about E
Nebraska’s rich his- [
tory from presenta- m
tions that use the I
latest technology |
Courtesy Photo
The Great Platte River Archway Monument spans the width of Interstate 80
near Kearney. The archway Ijas Nebraska history exhibits in its museum.
from around the
world, he said.
The inside of the
arch is fascinating
and will surprise vis
itors with its interactive exhibits, he
said.
“The internal part is incredible,” he
said.
Though people are raving about the
arch's inside, there will always be dis
cussion about its exterior, Kotsiopulos
said.
Architects will debate about the
monument's structural significance for
years to come, he said.
One of the arch’s most vocal critics,
Please see ARCH on 6
The Clinton Yeats
President paved
way from Cold War
to globalization
BY BRIAN CARLSON
In what is billed as a major speech, President
Clinton will discuss his foreign policy record today
and chart a course for the future of the U.S. role in the
world.
As part of his first visit to Nebraska as president,
Clinton will speak today at 9 a.m. at the University of
Nebraska at Kearney. His address is tided “A Foreign
Policy for the Global Age.”
"The president will talk about the role that
America has played in the world over the course
of the last several years, the principles that
have guided the administration's foreign
policy and the path we should take in the
future,” said Jason Schechter, a White
House spokesman.
“He will stress the continuing impor
tance of America’s engagement in the world
and the American people’s interest in for
eign policy.
“This speech is as much a look back
on the successes of the Clinton
administration on foreign policy as it
is a look down the road to what our
foreign policy should be in the
future.”
Clintons foreign-policy
address in Nebraska provides a
chance to evaluate die foreign
policy record he compiled
during his two terms. Two |
University of Nebraska- jj
Lincoln professors said Jj
Clinton’s record was a mix
ture of Mures and successes,
marked by confusion over the
nature of the post-Cold War era.
An article by bandy Berger, Clinton s national
security adviser, in the November/December issue of
Foreign Affairs bears the same title as Clinton's
speech.
Berger gives Clinton credit for expanding NATO,
halting the violence in Bosnia, leading the NATO
bombing campaign to stop human-rights abuses by
Yugoslav forces in Kosovo, sealing free-trade agree
ments and leading the country into a globalized
world.
"I believe President Clinton's most fundamental
achievement is that he steered America from the Cold
War era to the era of globalization in a way that
enhanced not only our power but also our authority,"
Berger wrote. “That is the foundation on which we
must advance our interests in a global age.”
Berger argues that the next president should
maintain the strong U.S. alliances but help them
adapt to new challenges, constructively engage for
mer Cold War adversaries such as Russia and China,
work to quell local conflicts that threaten intemation
al peace, address me prouieration ot weapons or mass
destruction and continue to press for economic inte
gration and free trade.
David Forsythe, a UNL political science professor,
said Clinton’s foreign-policy legacy is difficult to
define. No “Clinton doctrine” has emerged, he said,
but that may be because of the era's complexity.
During the Cold War, the United States had a clear
enemy in the Soviet Union and was able to define its
foreign policy in terms of containing Soviet commu
nism. No such simple foreign-affairs paradigm is
apparent today, Forsythe said.
“His legacy is the difficulty of establishing a coher
ent policy after the Cold War,” he said. “It's not at all
clear that Clinton is associated with any particular
vision about the U.S. and world affairs. He was much
more in the pragmatic, muddle-through tradition
than he was in the big picture tradi
tion.”
After primarily stressing
domestic policy during his suc
cessful campaign to defeat
President George Bush in the
1992 election, Clinton
received criticism for his
early foreign policy.
"Most scholars believe
Clinton was not very inter
ested in foreign policy when
he came into office,” he
said. “It was only late in his
second term that he
began to pay more sys
tematic attention to
foreign policy.”
Early
Clinton failures includ
ed the humanitarian
mission in Somalia, i
which the United |
States abandoned after i
a 1993 firefight in
Mogadishu left 18 U.S.
Rangers dead. The
I allure to inter
vene to stop
genocide it
Rwanda in
1994 also
was a fail
u r e ,
Forsythe
said.
The Clinton administration also was reluctant to
intervene decisively to stop ethnic warfare in the
Balkans. Finally, in 1995, NATO bombing and
Croatian success on the battlefield helped bring the
fighting to a stop.
Clinton learned from the early U.S. and NATO fail
ures in Bosnia and intervened more decisively in
Kosovo, Forsythe said. Although the operation was
messy, it eventually stopped the attacks on civilians by
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s forces.
Clinton may have been most successful on inter
national economic issues, Forsythe said. He helped
secure passage of the North American Free Trade
Agreement, oversaw the creation of the World Trade
Organization and successfully argued for continuing
trade with China despite its poor human rights
record.
He also drew mostly positive reviews for his
attempts to bring peace to Northern Ireland and the
Middle East through negotiations, part of his attempt
to fashion a foreign policy legacy, Forsythe said.
ON File Photos
“Maybe
it’s not ultimately a bad thing to have a pragmatic
leader, but it does leave us with the lack of a clear lega
cy and a lack of vision about the place of the U.S. in die
world after the Cold War/' Forsythe said.
“I can’t imagine what he’ll tell us in Kearney. It’s
awfully late to be talking about foreign policy in con
ceptual terms. Why didn’t he do this eight years ago?”
Lloyd Ambrosius, a UNL history professor, said
Clinton came to office at a time when the United
States was uncertain about its new role in the world
“If there is a legacy, it is that American presidents
in the post-Cold War era have had to deal with the
messiness of the world, and there is no single doctrine
Please see CLINTON on 6
State earns
B average
for schools
BYJILLZEMAN
On the higher education report card, Nebraska
didn't bring home straight As, but it won’t be placed
on academic probation either.
The Chronicle of Higher Education published
grades for all 50 states, rating them on different edu
cational aspects.
Nebraska’s high schools fared well, with the
state’s receiving As in student preparation and the
percentage of high-school graduates enrolled in col
lege.
But the state’s affordability and retention rates
didn’t make as good of grades, earning a C+ and C
respectively.
States also were graded on benefits, which meas
ures the percentage of residents with a bachelor’s
degree or higher, residents who vote and residents
with high literacy skills. For this, Nebraska received a
B-.
All in all, the state ended up with a B average.
No state came away with straight As.
Massachusetts came closest, with four As and a D in
affordability.
On the lower end of the spectrum, Louisiana
received two Fs, one D+, a C- and a C.
Susanna Finnell, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
director of admissions, said she was pleased with
Nebraska’s grades.
At first, Finnell said, she was disappointed with
the C grades, but after examining other states’ scores
and the criteria used, she didn’t think Nebraska fared
too badly.
“It’s tough,” Finnell said, in reference to the grad
ing criteria. "There’s no grade inflation here.”
Finnell said she was especially pleased with the
A- grade for high-school preparation.
“It speaks highly of the preparation of high
school students,” she said. "These are the students
we'd like to attract”
Please see CHRONICLE on 7
i
Regents
Board to focus
on'brain drain'
BY VERONICA DAEHN
The University of Nebraska has been suffering
from what Papillion Regent Drew Miller calls the
“brain drain” for some time.
But on Saturday, the NU Board of Regents hopes
to come closer to solving that problem.
The regents meet Saturday at 8:30 a.m. in Varner
Hall, 3835 Holdrege St., on East Campus.
Their strategic issue this month is undergradu
ate student recruitment. A panel of administrators
from all four NU campuses will speak on the issue,
said Joe Rowson, NU spokesman.
The panel is in response to a request for infor
mation the regents made about six months ago,
Rowson said. TTiey want to know how the university
system can improve recruitment.
Miller said intensifying undergraduate student
recruitment efforts at NU has been a concern for
quite some time.
“We’ve been asking for better action to be taken
by the university so we can be more competitive” he
said.
Please see REGENTS on 7
