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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (March 23, 2001)
Opinion Page 4 Daily Nebraskan Friday, March 23,2001 />«/vNebraskan Since 1901 Editor Sarah Baker Opinion Page Editor Jake Giazeski Managing Editor Bradley Davis “My dream is to be 95 years old and having to be wheeled into the classroom to teach.” NU Chancellor Harvey Perlman, on his truest goals within the university “There’s a childlike innocence that comes with true passion, and if you lack this subtle glow, you ain’t foolin’ me, pretentious boy (or gill)." Columnist Karen Brown, while speaking on the art of conversation “I’m as fascinated by Thomas Edison and Teddy Roosevelt as I am by Irving Berlin and Scott Joplin. I’ve been trying to get them together for years.” Max Morath, pianist, on the continuity of his interest in disparate cultural threads “We will try to be a multidimensional team.” NU Coach Frank Solich, on his plans for the next football season “Luckily for Pepsi, if no one else, those innovative hippies saw another need that they could satisfy - that is, a place where underage white kids could steal beer and then grope, or even sexually assault, basically helpless girls in some sort of'Million-Man Frat Party' - and provided the public with it by producing the second and third incarnations ofWoodstock." Columnist Ted Wheeler, on the sellout of the hippie generation “It's not essential to my survival here, but I enjoy it when I watch it" Freshman Chris Kerr, on the importance of cable in his life “I'm hoping the numbers will turn around. I'm an optimist I’ll never get tired of this." NU Gymnastics Coach Francis Allen, on his devotion to coaching gymnastics and to his gymnasts “To the extent I paid attention, I liked it." NU Chancellor Harvey Perlman, on the attainment of his undergraduate history degree “In the '70s, you heard a lot of these bands, but now, especially in the Lincoln and Omaha area, you don't see too many horn bands any more.” Todd French, bass trombone player of Planet Butter, on the rarity of bands with a horn section “If I just be myself and be a leader out there, a lot of those things will fall into place." NU quarterback Eric Crouch, on his role in next season's team “If we want to be a better university, we have to pay better salaries. It’s a reflection of how much we were underpaying our top administrators.” NU Board of Regents Chairman Dr. Charles Wilson, in response to negative reac tions to recent administrative salary hikes “ASUN having total control over the cam pus newspaper’s purse strings would be equivalent to the government running a newspaper.” Daily Nebraskan editorial, on the negative ramifications of allowing the ASUN more budgetary involvement in the assignment of funding Editorial Board Sarah Baker, Jeff Bloom, Bradley Davis, Jake Glazeski, Matthew Hansen, Samuel McKewon, Kimberly Sweet Letters Policy The Daly Nebraskan welcomes brief lettere to the edtor and piste columns, but does not guaran tee Mr pubfcabon. The Daly Nebraskan retains the right to adt or reject any malarial submitted. SubmttBdmteBrinlharnmaapmpnrty of the Dafr Nebraskan and cannot be rakened. Anonymous auhmiaaions tel not be pubishad. Thoee teio submit lattara mute identify toamoakioe by name, year fei school. ma|or anchor group affiSabon, V any Submit material to: Daly Nebraskan, 20 Nebraska Union, 1400 R St Unooto.NE 69588-0448 E-mat tsnarsOdalyneb.com rrBtnrinl - bcntonai Money Unsigned edtorisis are the opinions of the Spring 2001 Daly Nebraskan. They do not neceesarty reflect the views of the Urevereity of Nebraska-Uncoln, its employees, its student body or the Unhertey of Nebraska Board of Regents. A column is solely the opinion of *s author a catoon is solely toe option of 8s artist The Board of Regents acts as pubisher of toe Daly Nebraskan; poi cy is ate by the Daly Nebraskan Edtorial Board. The UNL Pubicabons Board, eatablahad by the regents, supervises the production of the paper. Accoidng to poicy set by the regents, responsi bly tor the edlorid content of the newspaper lee soleiy in the hands of Is employees. Africa's truth diverse Samuel Mckewon, exactly where was God helping fight famine in Africa? You see, Africa is such a big continent with so many countries with such diverse weather patterns that you have to be more specific. Do you mean, maybe, he was at the equatorial belt, which receives more rain than you could ever imagine, or maybe he was in the Sahara desert, which is dry almost all year round? I totally enjoy your columns, but I have a slight problem when Africa is portrayed as a starving con tinent You may say I am over-reacting, but it is subtle stereotypical references such as yours that build up in people's minds and snowball to epic propor tions. So if you were to have said “famine in northern Kenya,” I would have had no problems, as you would have been correct and specific, having real ized that countries in Africa deserve unique atten tion. (Who wouldn’t?) Erick Kinyungu biochemistry, premedical junior president, African Students Association Why pay the DN? AP news: I can read that on line from a more reli able source. Sports: I watch SportsCenter. If people are Husker-deprived, they can read die Journal Star. Classifieds; I get the Sunday newspaper. UNL news: OK, I’D give you that Opinion: I watch “Politically Incorrect* Obviously, you can see I can get my daily fix of news from more trustworthy (and free) sources. So it seems as though the only thing that the Daily Nebraskan gives is UNL news, a chance to fur ther careers by publishing articles at the student body’s expense and the invaluable crossword neces sary to survival. So why does the DN need a projected $70,000 profit for this when most of what they provide I can get elsewhere? Why is it necessary to have $50,000 in student fees to do this? I don't know, but according to an inference by die DN, die “voices of die students” want die DN to get their allocated funds. Well, this is one voice who says they can survive without aU of that money. Josh O’Connell first-year law student College of Law Time to ban small-talk I’ve finally figured out the perfect solution to our uni versity's apparent suckiness. In light of our new chan cellor’s recently-acquired chancellorship, I thought I would throw my idea on the table and see what happens. With new leadership comes, first and foremost, higher salaries, and some where later on the list is gen Simon Ringsmuth uine academic improvement for the students. In the time it takes me to write this here column, the average UNL chancellor would make enough money to buy him or herself a new set of brake pads for his or her Oldsmobile Toronado, and mean while, I’m just barely making enough to cover the cost of my soda. It’s a sacrifice, yes, but I’m willing to let all of you in on my little secret - despite a severe lack of reim bursement Here’s my plan for improving just about any thing you can think of at our university. Eliminate small talk. Simple times call for simple answers, and folks, this is about as simple as things get around here in the land of the bugeaters. I dare you to count how many utterly pointless, hopelessly inane conversations you have each day here at UNL Is it 10? Itoenty? Even more, I bet, if you’re actually going to class instead of download ing Steely Dan’s bootleg tracks all night and sleeping i all day My proposal is to institute a bylaw in the consti tution (Every place like this surely has a constitu tion, and what better place to implement a propos al like this than in the bylaws?) that imposes swift, harsh punishment for any and all small-talk con versations. Introductory phrases with multiple-choice answers are completely out of the question. “Hi, how are you?” (fine, good, all right) will result in an immediate running over from the guy driving the wheelbarrow at the new parking garage being built on 17th and R streets. “How’s it going?" (pretty good, not too bad) means 39 lashes with a wet egg noodle. “What’s up?" (only one possible answer for this one: not much) gets the purveyor banned from reading the DN in class for the rest of the semester. Imagine the possibilities here, people! Let’s say that every small-talk conversation that begins with any of the above phrases lasts, oh, three minutes. On a good day, you’ve wasted at least a half hour yammering on about majors, which classes you’re taking, how spring breaks/weekends/Martin Luther King Jr. days were, or how stressed out you think you are from your astroquantum mechanics midterm. That’s two-and-a-half hours a week-80 hours in a semester-just flushed right down the toilet (most likely the toilet in Avery that has “please flush” sten ciled in black letters on the back wall of the stall). The point of banning small-talk is to force us, as a group of20,000students, to think on a higher level at the most basic of our daily activities. If we didn't have cheesy small-talk as an option available to us, we would have to find actual things, relevant things, to talk about. Our minds would be taxed to the point of exhaustion to have true, meaningful conversation with others. The point of that, finally, would be to stimulate us, causing us to think beyond the box that is now banned from existence. We’d be thinking harder in class just because our minds would be used to it Essays would be written with ease and with better quality than before because of our new, elevated mindset. Exams would have to be re-written to take advantage of the mil lions of synapses firing in our brains that we never even knew existed. And, somewhere in the distant future, we might have a shot at second-tier status as a result Of course, we will also have to ban small-talk answers to these questions. Any of die previous pos sible answers are unacceptable. Under my proposal you will be required to think of an actual answer. One that carries some amount of substance. Someone asks how you’re doing, and you’d bet ter have a good, honest response. Or at least one that shows a smidgin of creativity. Rest assured, the campus police will be looking out to enforce this, as well as the meter maids that circle like vultures along R Street The first sign of a boring cookie-cutter answer will land you in the restroom, getting a swirly from Tommie Fraser’s grandmother. It only gets worse from there. Small-talk is so pointless, it makes me shiver. Generally, I don’t want to know how anyone is doing, and chances are they don’t even want to tell me. So why even ask the question? I like to find out about people, show interest in their lives and lend an ear when it’s needed. Small talk is counterproductive and forces everyone to use die same old answers to the same old meaning less questions. Sometimes people answer the wrong tiling just because it’s been so ingrained in their minds. "How are you?" will sometimes get the response “not much" because everyone expects you to ask “what’s up?" instead. You want to break the ice? Ask real questions or give real answers. Tell someone how you really are doing and see how they react Being friendly to others is worlds apart from thinly veiled indifference for the sake of conven ience. Show the world that you really do care. When my proposal gets passed, as soon as I find out how to submit it you won't really have a choice. If you’ve got a problem with it... oops, I’ve total ly gotta run. My class starts in five minutes. Take care, dudes! I’ll see ya later! Call me sometime! Death of a childhood dream Ahh, Spring Break. So education al in so many ways. I know what you’re thinking, you sickos, and no. Come on, my parents are going to read this. Elizabeth Polles I spent my Spring Break in Orlando with my two best friends. We're good girls. We weren't there to spend the whole time drunk or passed out or to see which ofus could bed the most men. Oh no. We were there to revel at the "Happiest Place on Earth:" Disney Worfd. I learned a very cynical, yet impor tant lesson there. When people congre gate in large groups, their IQs drop at least 30 points and they become oblivi ous to everyone else around them. I know that there has to be evidence of this in some psychology book some where. Darwin would have loved Disney World. It's a prime example of the sur vival of the fittest A person, especially a gin, must stay on her guard at all times if she expects to survive. To also have fun, she must be smart-acrouchingtiger.onemightsay and outwit the hyenas who would snatch her zebra leg out of her teeth if they had the chance. And don't count on a giant, friendly looking mouse to come and back you up He’s not just out walking around the park like in the commercials. You have to go to a designated spot and wait in line for, tike, two days if you want to see Mickey That’s IF you want to see Mickey. While we were at a club at Pleasure Island, Disney's night-life area, we sawa very intimidating woman ranting and raving in a British accent about how Mickey Mouse is a "f-ing narcissist because everything is made in his f-ing image.” Now I know that not any of you are thinking, "You know, she’s right; Mickey Mouse is a narcissist” and I (font have to teUyou: HE’S NOT READS Our first encounter with hyenas was when we were standing in line for the Dumbo ride. We wanted to do everything, OK? Shut up Anyway, we tigers were politely standing in line when two Texan hyenas came strolling up with their 80 little hye nas. Instead of getting in line behind us (we were obviously there first), they decided that the line should continue out to die side, after die group in front of us instead of straight out behind us. When the line started to move, the one who appeared to be the Alpha Male of the group quickly ran in front of us and beckoned to the rest of his clan to file in behind him, saying, “Come on, kids. Come on, come on.” My friends and I stared open mouthed at this performance, and, while we waited, I was reduced to commenting audibly on the detriment to children whose parents teach diem to cut in line. It was pathetic, I tell you. But we learned our lesson. The next people who tried to do that lost eyes. The next day, we merrily made our way to MGM Studios. What happened there was almost enough to make me lose my faith in the general intelligence ofhumans. We were standing in line to go on die Aerosmith Rock ‘N Rollercoaster, free of cutters, and we noticed a woman in line a ways ahead of us holding an infant We thought that this was odd. One doesn't often see babies in roller coaster lines. We wondered what the woman was planning on doing with the baby, since it was obviously not 40 inches tail and they don't have special car seats for small children on roller coasters. (Why the heck not, I don't know. Babies love being flung about erratically. Someone could make a fortune off of that!) But we thought that maybe she was just waiting in line with her other kids or something and wasn't actually planning to ride the roller coaster. We were wrong. A few minutes later, as we were get ting close to the front of the line, we noticed the woman, still holding the baby holding up the ride while arguing with the attendant The guy just kept shaking his head at her and finally showed her out the door. Let me recap: This lady was trying to take her infant with her on a roller coast er. It went really fast. It went upside down. She apparently thought that she could hold it in her lap, between the shoulder harness thing that goes over your head. I’m surprised they didn’t detain the idiot while they called Social Services. Why are people like that allowed to have children? Why? Arg. I'm a bitter, bitter woman. I have been completely disillusioned by Disney World. The naive innocence of my child hood is officially dead thanks to the Happiest Place on Earth.