Opinion
/M/rNebraskan
Since 1901
Editor Sarah Baker
Opinion Page Editor Jake Glazeski
Managing Editor Bradley Davis
No sweat
UHL can model Hotre Dame's
anti-sweatshop efforts
Editor’s Note: The Association of Students
of the University of Nebraska passed a bill
March 1 to encourage UNL to join the Worker
Rights Consortium.
The Observer
University of Notre Dame
SOUTH BEND, Ind. (U-WIRE) - Notre
Dame should be commended for its decision
to join the Worker Rights Consortium.
Membership offers a chance to expand
Notre Dame’s ability to stomp out sweatshop
labor in the production of college apparel.
This decision could strengthen Notre
Dame’s role as the leading university in the
battle against sweatshops.
For years, Notre Dame has set the standard
for anti-sweatshop initiatives by universities.
It was the first university to adopt a code of
conduct for manufacturers in 1997 and was
the first university to monitor its own sweat
shops. Notre Dame also banned the manufac
turing of any of its products in countries like
China, which do not allow workers to organ
ize. This ban will take effect June 30.
But Notre Dame’s leadership in the battle
against sweatshops doesn’t stop with codes of
conduct and independent monitoring. The
university is also one of the leaders of the uni
versity advisory council of the Fair Labor
Association.
The university also works with church and
human rights organizations to increase its
monitoring of labor conditions in Latin
America.
Clearly, Notre Dame takes solid, meaning
ful steps toward curtailing sweatshop labor.
After taking such a strong stance against
sweatshop labor, Notre Dame must ensure
that its membership in the Worker Rights
Consortium only enhances its mission
against sweatshops.
Notre Dame nas made a significant finan
cial commitment to the consortium by ear
marking 1 percent of its licensing revenue to
the anti-sweatshop group.
As one of the largest collegiate licensers in
the country, Notre Dame will give thousands
of dollars to the consortium.
At the same time, the university acknowl
edges concerns regarding the structure of the
Worker Rights Consortium and its plan for
monitoring factories. Now, only five universi
ties sit on the board of directors of the consor
tium. If universities are going to spend signifi
cant money on the group, they should have a
larger say in the direction of it.
As it’s set up now, the consortium steps in
to monitor factories only when a complaint
has been logged. While this system is effective
for resolving disputes by placing the power of
major universities behind the workers, it does
little to prevent these problems initially.
The consortium should randomly monitor
factories before problems occur.
As the newest member of the consortium,
Notre Dame should push for a swift resolution
to these concerns. If Notre Dame’s experience
as the leading anti-sweatshop university can
strengthen the anti-sweatshop group, then
Notre Dame’s investment is worthwhile.
Editorial Board
Sarah Baker, Jeff Bloom, Bradley Davis, Jake Glazeski,
Matthew Hansen, Samuel McKewon, Kimberly Sweet
Letters Policy
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Unsigned editorials are the opinions of the Spring 2001 Daily Nebraskan. They do not necessanly
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
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bility for the editonal content of the newspaper lies solely in the hands of its employees.
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Letters to the editor
Explain diversity
I used to find it funny that so many people in
this university, from UNL’s leadership to ASUN
President Joel Schafer to the DN editorial board,
consistently laud diversity without ever explaining
what makes diversity inherently great to begin
with.
That’s why I almost fell out of my seat when the
DN finally tried, in its editorial criticizing Regent
Miller, to explain why diversity is so, so important
to UNL.
To no avail.
According to the editorial, “minorities should
be recruited because they’re a valuable ...
resource.” Right. So am I supposed to liken all
minority students to a book I can check out at Love
Library? Are minority students here for my use and
enjoyment?
The editorial continues with, "Seeing someone
who doesn’t look like you can help you learn a great
deal - a fact not lost on most administrators and
lawmakers.” Please, lead me to the genius who
wrote that, so that I may bow down and offer
thanks for clearing this whole diversity thing up for
me. You can’t be serious.
What, exactly, am I to learn by seeing someone
who doesn’t look like me? That maybe I should go
get a haircut so I look like them?
Diversity is a buzz word, a fad, just like the word
"multicultural” was a few years ago. When UNL
announced its two finalists for the chancellor posi
tion, for example, ASUN President Schafer was
quoted as saying that he was glad to see diversity in
the selection committee's choices.
Bill Hogan has excellent leadership credentials,
but Schafer chose to comment on diversity. No
reason given. Diversity was just the popular thing
to say.
But it’s getting old. Everybody wants diversity
but nobody will say why. There’s a reason, right?
Enlighten me.
Still, I believe that UNL should recruit only the
most qualified students and teachers. If those stu
dents and teachers happen to be from minority
groups, then by all means, get them to Lincoln. But
it’s time to stop filling quotas.
Thompson Herman
sophomore
journalism
In defense of Dave
This letter is in response to Tony Bock’s column
in the Tuesday opinion page about Dave
Matthews’ new album.
Mr. Bock, you were totally unjustified with
what you wrote. How dare you criticize someone
the way you did Dave Matthews. You have no idea
the time, effort and emotional strain that musi
cians face, especially someone in Dave’s shoes.
Did you read the Rolling Stone article about the
new album? It said that it took him two years to
work up the courage to play his songs in front of his
friends, and now he’s been performing 200 shows a
year in sold out stadiums for a decade.
Quite an accomplishment for someone as appar
ently shy as Dave.
Your article doesn’t just suck. It really sucks.
Preston Van Amburg
■ freshman
general studies
Love behind a hidden secret
Thick, frothy waves
build steadily then sigh and
roll upon the morning
shore. Mild chatter from
early morning continental
breakfast guests flows out
into the air. A young couple
Yasmin
McEwen
in meir eariy zus maxes
their way through the buffet
line at this four-star hotel in
Cancun, Mexico.
The girl is well-tanned,
and her long legs are lean underneath a short white
skirt. She wears strapless sandals and her blue hal
ter-top shimmies as she leans over to pick a large
strawberry from the fruit bowl.
Her eyes are the size of plump grapes; they are a
deep blue - almost a purple blue - and she wears
her long blonde wavy hair loose about her thin
shoulders. The couple takes their breakfast out to
the stone patio. Farther out past the shore, fat peli
cans are nose-diving for fish. Some ride atop easy
sloping waves like decoys in the water, while others
fly into shore. They swoop down low along the
beach.
The man takes the girl’s hand in his. Old cou
ples’ eyes wander over to them with wistful smiles
in remembrance. Cabana boys watch the girl’s face
hungrily. They memorize her expressions.
Later the couple will board a touring boat that
will take them to Isla Mujeres, where they wilfgo
snorkeling and swimming among vibrant fish and
coral that play underneath turquoise waters. There
will be a nude beach where they will lie lazily in the
sun, dozing like puppies on a carpet of white sand.
There will be a discussion of how to spend the
evening with very little contemplation and even
less disagreement as they turn their heads toward
each other, their eyes gleaming like little kids on a
day of playing hooky.
In the late afternoon, a siesta will be taken and
the long thin curtains will billow in and out with
the breeze. Their hushed, hard breathing - coming
fast, coming slow, then tired. Spent, they will feel
the cool spurts of the air conditioner. An early
evening rain will fall and rock them gently to sleep
as they dream visions that mirror the day. Life and
dreams are one.
Later, they will go out. The girl wears her deep
golden tan like she wears the three-karat diamond
platinum ring on her hand; the man so handsome
and clean cut in his khakis and white T-shirt. They
will dance on the tables at Senior Frog’s and do the
limbo in the tequila line. At 2 a.m., he will lift her
out of the cab and carry her upstairs
Choppy waves build steadily then crash
unflinchingly upon the trembling sand. Mild chat
ter from early morning continental breakfast
guests wafts into the morning breeze.
A young girl makes her way through the buffet
line at this four-star hotel in Cancun, Mexico. The
girl is well tanned and her long legs are lean as they
glisten like carved thin logs underneath her blue
shorts. The young man is already sitting at the table
drinking his coffee.
When she gets to the table, he looks at her as a
father who has just seen his daughter in the most
uncompromising of positions and says, “You
should go back and get some more food." She
ignores him and sits down and begins to eat a
strawberry.
He leans over.
“We need to discuss what happened in the
bathroom last night," he says.
The girl looks away.
“How long have you been doing it?” he says.
“We’ve got to get you checked into a hospital as
soon as we get back.”
She ignores him and continues to eat.
“No,” she says. “I won’t go there.”
He runs his Fingers through his hair then puts
his hand on her thin arm. She pulls it away like a
retreating snake.
“I’ve married a stranger," he says. “Don't you
think ... don’t you think I should’ve known about
this?”
“I’m fine,” she says. “It’s under control."
“The secret life is under control...,” he says.
“That’s why it was secret, huh?”
His eyes, she notes, sets as hard as the cold gray
marble floor. She looks out at the ocean now, the
waves slapping cold upon the soft shore.
She wonders about last night. The repeated loss
that she so desperately wants to stop. Yet she can’t
give in to imperfection. He wouldn't look at her the
same if she did. If she were to gain a size or two.
There will be no end. The cycle will continue
only behind closed doors.
"That was the last time,” she says. But it wasn't,
she knows.
A young couple sits at a table eating continen
tal breakfast. They are on honeymoon in Cancun,
Mexico.
The economics
of sin
Ever since Adam Smith discovered
that greed is good and is the solid founda
tion of a robust economy, one of the great
tasks of government has been to arrange
its laws so as to profit as much as possible
from people’s
vices.
The real trick
so far as I can tell
is to legalize some
sin that is legal nowhere else. For
instance, one of the main arguments for
gay marriage in Hawaii of a couple years
ago was that legalizing it would be a huge
boost to the island’s tourism industry
because gays would come from all over
the country in order to solemnize their
marriages.
Or to take a much older example, in
the Middle Ages, certain cities such as
Amsterdam and Venice established
themselves as major trading posts by
legalizing usury.
Of course, in this country, the state of
Nevada has long been the true trailblazer
in this area. The Silver State has shown
that it really knows how to acquire silver
by pioneering legalized gambling, prosti
tution and no-fault divorce. And today,
when you can’t even smoke in a bar in
nearby Los Angeles, there's not even a no
smoking section in Las Vegas casinos.
As a result, cities like Las Vegas and
Reno literally blossomed out of the desert
sand overnight And they remain shining
models of economic growth, progress
and development for the rest of the
nation.
Chas
Baylor
states now are nnauy paying nomage
to the genius of Nevada. Having approved
of Nevada-style divorce in the 1970s,
many states in the 1990s passed Nevada
style gambling laws. There’s been quite a
bit of talk about passing such laws in
Nebraska since four surrounding states
have casino gambling, and it is argued
that we are missing out on the action.
What this approach ignores is that
Nevada got to where it is today not by
copying other states, and certainly not by
copying third-tier states such as Iowa and
Kansas, but by legalizing sins that were
not legahn surrounding states.
In fact, selective suppression of cer
tain vices can actually work to a state’s
economic advantage. No one would
argue, for instance, that the massive
excise taxes on cigarettes have not been a
great boon to the state’s coffers. At the
same time, these taxes increase the for
bidden pleasure-appeal of the product,
with the result that the effect of such taxes
on consumption is minimal at best.
This probably explains the continu
ing popularity of cigarettes, especially
among high school students, so there is
little cause for concern that this rich
source of state income will dry up any
time soon.
Contrary to sensationalist press
reports about brain drains and economic
depression, this has probably also been
the effect of Initiative 416 upon homosex
uality. This particular vice has been
paraded for years in the newspapers and
on the main streets of the nation.
In short, until 416 passed, the gay
rights movement was suffering from what
might be called a “Holocaust syndrome" -
there was nobody around any more who
remembered back when gays actually got
bashed. Now any gay who tells the whole
world about the first time he was “con
quered” experiences a frisson of danger -
that a strapping young SS officer, working
for the state attorney general, may appear
at anv moment to subdue him.
No, gambling and sodomy are very
much in - elsewhere. Nebraska needs to
find a sin which Iowa, Kansas and
Missouri haven’t already thought of.
Prostitution, for instance.
With “escort services” openly adver
tising that they’ll satisfy your “ultimate
needs," this vice is for all intents and pur
poses already legal. But it’s one thing to be
able to call up a whore. It is quite another
to have a European-styie red-light district
at your disposal. The natural site for a new
tenderloin district would be exactly
where it was 91 years ago, when my
granddaddy moved to town, a young
bachelor fresh out of law school.
Yes sir, there were cat houses up and
down Ninth Street until the Methodists
and suffragettes closed them down. A lit
tle urban renewal in the Haymarket along
these lines, and Iowa and Kansas won’t
know what hit them.
Drugs and alcohol are other vices that
might be considered for deregulation. If
the state started treating alcohol, or even
just beer, as it does nonalcoholic bever
ages, UNL would have no problem
attracting quality students. The vicious
slander that UNL is a mediocre institu
tion would be relegated to ancient histo
ry
Of course, the state would lose its fed
eral highway funds. But this would be
more than offset by the revenue from all
the youths who would come here to
drink. In fact, until the mid-1980s, the
University of Wisconsin and the
University of Vermont long attracted stu
dents they never would have otherwise
simply on account of their states’ drink
ing age of 18.
The possibilities for creative pander
ing are probably endless. But the main
thing is to be creative. There is nothing
worse than a boring sin.
