The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current, March 06, 2001, Page 5, Image 5
Testimony heard to raise minimum wage ■ Supporters of the proposed bill hope to improve poverty, despite what some argue. BYOEOB6EGHEEM Workers on the bottom rung of the financial ladder may get to step up soon. Members of the Business and Labor Committee heard testimo ny Monday on a bill that would boost Nebraska's minimum wage from $5.15 to $6.15 per hour. The bill breaks the increases into two 50 cent bumps, the first of which would occur Oct. l.The next would occur in April2002. . Advocates of LB633 said the wage spike would help Nebraska’s poorest families who generally hold jobs that pay minimum Opponents, though, said the bOl would do nothing more than increase prices mi goods and serv ices, which would hurt the poor families the bill aimed to help. Sen. Chris Beutler of Lincoln, who introduced the biU, said it addressed a fundamental injus tice in Nebraska's economic sys tem. “The8percent under the min imum wage are simply being treated unfeirty,” he said. But Kathy Siefken, director of the Nebraska Grocery Industry Association, said die vast majority of fyebraska businesses already pakl above the minimum wage. They have to, she said, because the state’s unemploy ment rate is so low. “In Nebraska, employers are scrounging for employees,” she said. In addition, she said, the bill stifles business expansion and forces owners to jack up prices to offset the additional expenses. She said the proposals may go so far as to force businesses to dose shop or to relocate to neigh boring states that had more affordable business dimates. Beutler wasn’t convinced his bill would send businesses scurry ing to other sates. He said the retailing and restaurant industries house most of the minimum wage positions in the state, and these industries were ensconced in their respec tive markets. “Arty’s is not going to relocate to Iowa,” he said. . Milo Mumgaard, executive director of the Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest agreed that most businesses wont head for the bor der Rather, he said the bill would help struggling Nebraskans get back on their feel “Nebraska has a problem with low wages for these thousands of families, particularly those com ing off welfare, “he sakL Ron Sedlacek, a lobbyist for the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said Nebraska’s poorest workers deserve a hand. But, he said, Beutler's bill would help more part-time and young workers than people who actually live in poverty “This does little to help the working poor get out of poverty,” he said. These people need educa tional programs and training, he said. Sedlacek also suggested Nebraska wait for the federal gov ernment to sort out the issue before enacting the plan, he said. Beutler said waiting for the federal government to make a move was foolish; increasing the minimum wage was the logical thing to da An increased minimum wage, Beutler said, would cut down on the amount of people who depend on the government’s social programs, like welfare. "Why do we whip ourselves into big government because businesses don't pay enough?” he asked. More importantly, he said, the bill would allow Nebraska’s poor est citizens to live “life in little more dignified fashion." Speaker addresses 'maternal instinct' BY MARK BALDRIDGE High rates of infant abandon ment in certain historical contexts have caused some researchers to deny the concept of “maternal instinct” in humans as a “bour geois fantasy,” Sarah BLaffer Hrdy, an expert in primate sociobiology and author, said Monday. Addressing the Lied Center for Performing Arts audience of 450 at the E.N. Thompson Forum, Hidy countered this position with one of her own, developed in her recent book “Mother Nature: A history of Mothers, Infants and Natural Selection.’ Using slides, quotes from the literature of the subject and regu lar doses of humor, Hrdy pro posed that mothering instincts in humans depended largely on the support resources available in which mothers projected raising their young. “Local conditions shape the context of expression of maternal instinct,” she said. “Wherever assistance rearing infants is in short supply and other forms of birth control are unavailable, abandonment and infanticide have been practiced” Looking to conditions in the Pleistocene era, such as 18th cen tury France and 21st century Texas where it is now legal to abandon infants in certain loca tions, including places like fire statidns, within 72 hours after birth, Hrdy put forth the theory that human beings are “coopera tive breeders.” Given the vast investment human mothers must make to rear children - among other pri mates, weaned infants are able to provision themselves, while this is far from true with humans - mothers must have recourse to a support system consisting of other mothers, individuals who are not yet breeding and older ldn past breeding age. The theory is known as the “grandmother hypothesis” of the evolution of child care in humans. Other factors that contributed to the activation of child rearing instinct seemed to be hormonal In one experiment conducted in 19th century Paris, mothers who were forced to breast feed their infants for eight days after giving birth later abandoned their off- ' spring at much lower rates than mothers not so forced. Hormonal changes, triggered by the release of prolactin in nurs ing mothers, were also credited with jump-starting the maternal instinct. The children of mothers who either abandoned infants or farmed out their feeding to “wet nurses,” or women who would be paid to breast feed other women's children, do show a significantly lower survival rate, Hrdy said. She concluded that many fac tors, impinging on a “maternal instinct” that was not automati cally engaged in all mothers, worked to create the spectrum of maternal responses to offspring observed in humans today editor of the Daily Nebraskan Applicants must have one year of newspaper experience, preferably at the Daily Nebraskan, be enrolled in at least six credit hours at UNL this spring, summer or fall, maintain a 2.0 minimum G.P.A., and not be on academic probation. Applications are available at die Daily Nebraskan office, basement of the Nebraska Union, and must be returned with up to three clips by noon March 19. THIS IS GIYirS ASS SCORE Clyde's ass is voting SC8II tomorrow in the ASUN Elections. Clyde knows that e vote for SCSI! | is a vote for his ass and Vote WE CARE ABOUT YOUR ASS! scan o ASUN Student Government Run-Off Election March 6, 2001 Group of UNL students to enter in world finals FINALS from page 1 the 1999 world finals held in die Netherlands. “They received an honorable mention that year,” Riedesel sakL “Going in to this year's con test, they have more training, more confidence and should do very well.” Sabalka said he thought the team had improved dramatically since the competition in the Netherlands. “I think we are a thousand times better than we were two years ago," he said. “Or at least 250 times better," Guo said. Though thousands of teams competed, only 64 advanced to the international competition. UNL earned a place at the world finals by beating 109 teams to take the top spot at the North American North Central regional competition in Lincoln in November. This year’s world finals includes teams from Harvard University, the University of Hong Kong, the American University of Cairo and the California Institute of Technology. The UNL team has been preparing for months for the competition. “We have been practicing three days a week," said Brown. Said Sabalka: “Tb do well you have to learn how to program fast and accurately.* The competition has stu dents working on complex prob lems using C, C ++, Java and Pascal programming languages. The five-hour event awards teams for their logic, strategy and speed. No matter how the team fin ishes in Vancouver, the students said their efforts had already attracted attention. After their first-place finish at the regional competition, the undergradu ates have been receiving e-mail messages from companies look ing to recruit them. “Our goal this year is to place in the top 15, but we would really like to make the top 10,* Brown said. “If you make the top 10, you get prizes.* DN News At the end of the day __ you can say Gosh, that was good IKWS. npymjy ^ KUITUt ■ NO APPOINTMENTS NEEDED* 117thANSI 476-9466 ■ OIL CHANGE SERVICE! The NO BULL Party would like to offer you, the student body, a voter guide for today's runoff election.... ^Grandfather Tuition Clause* This is a blind promise intended to make you vote for SCORE!. After researching the idea for hours and asking SCORE! how this was going to be done, we have still not discovered how they intend to make this work, let alone, get it passed by the Board of Regents. ^Affordable Books SCORE! has proposed a book swap that would be run through the ASUN office in order to ensure that students aren’t ‘‘taken out behind the whoopin’ shed” by the University bookstore and their lack of a buyback program. The NO BULL party thinks that a better solution to this problem would be to hold the bookstore to their contract that states that they will pay up to 60% of a books original value if is being used miring the next term or semester. ^Diversity/ International Students SCORE! wants to fight to ensure that International Students are still allowed to run for executive positions within ASUN by lobbying against Regent Restructuring. Who’s arguing? MAKE AN EDUCATED CHOICE VOTE NO BULL. * SCORE! Platform Headings are taken from actual SCORE propaganda. / NO BULL Changes in Dead Week Policy For too long the University's Dead Week Policy has taken advantage of students and deprived them of the proper preparation for Finals Week that we need and deserve. The NO BULL party wants to work with the Academic Senate to make sure that some progress is made toward improving this outdated policy. ^ Switch to a new email system The University's current system, BIGRED, is outdated and not being used by many students as their sole email provider. Many of us have seperate hotmail and yahoo accounts that are more accessible and easier to use than our current system. The NO BULL party proposes that we move our accounts from the BIGRED system to zhuskers.com in order to receive the same service from our University accounts as we get from our outside email providers. ^ judicial Advocacy Program The Judicial Advocacy Program, under a NO BULL Administration, would be created to help defend students who have been accused of violating the University's Code of Conduct. Under the current system, the only person offering counsel to an accused student is the person who is also prosecuting them. We just don't think that this is fair. NO BULL MIXAN-WESTERING ASDN SHUNT QCWERMBMT RDNOFF ELECTION MUCH «, 2001 PAID FOR BT TREASURER MCHELL! SCHRAGE