WHAT A DIFFERENCE TODAY MAKES! Members of the Husker Yell Squad will be featured in a videotaped segment on NBC's "Today" show. David Lipsius, an NBC producer, was in Lincoln on Tuesday to oversee taping of the short segments that lead into commercial breaks on the nationally televised morning program. During the segment, the cheerleaders yell out the names of "Today Show" personalities and shout, "What a difference Today makes!" Lipsius and his crew also taped segments with Husker strength coach Boyd Epley, Mike Voorhies, a UNL paleontologist and the Scarlet and Cream Singers at Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery. Lipsius said the segments were to be broadcast Friday morning or sometime over the next few weeks. Other segments for the show were taped at the State Capitol and in the Haymarket. |
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Faculty in construction management and business law and accounting will be treated to cookies and punch later this month provided by the University Bookstore to reward them for meeting the textbook ordering deadline.
Vi Schroeder, interim director of the bookstore, said these two departments were the first to meet the Oct. 24 deadline. She applauded textbook coordinators Lark Bear, construction management, and Sue Simpson, business law and accounting, for promptly expediting their departments' orders.
Unfortunately, Schroeder said, many departments have yet to place their orders, which is causing significant problems for the bookstore and students.
The bookstore expects to need about 3,800 titles for second semester but only 2,400 have been confirmed, she said. Because the bookstore doesn't know which titles will be readopted for next semester, it cannot offer as good a buy-back price for students. And the later the orders come in, the chances go up that books will be unavailable.
Shroeder said the University Bookstore, like most college bookstores, prefers to stock used books because they sell for 75 percent of the price of new books. If a title from first semester will be used next semester, the bookstore will buy the book from the student for 60 percent of the price of a new book. But the bookstore can't offer that high a rate if the status of the book's future use is uncertain or unknown, Schroeder said.
In addition, because all college bookstores scramble to find used books, and most use the same five wholesalers for books, the later the University Bookstore places an order for used books, the greater the chance that some other college bookstore has snagged all the used titles. So the University Bookstore must buy new books, meaning students pay more.
She also noted that if a title is new, the publisher may not have enough printed and late orders might have to be put on a backorder list.
"With classes starting in January, we need to have those texts on the shelves when the students and faculty want them," she said. "Otherwise, it's a big customer service problem for everyone."
Another looming problem is that shipping rates double during the holiday season and extremely late orders are shipped by second-day air. Higher shipping costs are "eaten" by the bookstore, Schroeder said, but that means a tighter bottom line for the unit.
Schroeder encouraged faculty and departments to turn in orders as soon as possible to their departmental textbook coordinator who can order them on-line using the bookstore's U-Book service.
-Kim Hachiya
University Park, Pa. - The legal heart of today's affirmative action policies, the Bakke decision, did not generate dramatic results as claimed by supporters and detractors. In a new book, two political scientists argue that the 1978 legal ruling did not significantly increase or decrease minority enrollments at U.S. medical and law schools.
The authors question whether the energy spent debating affirmative action might be better directed to finding more effective ways to combat discrimination and enhance opportunities.
"Bakke's effect on minority enrollment was far less than either supporters or opponents predicted," said Susan Welch, professor of political science and dean of the College of the Liberal Arts at Penn State. "It produced almost no change in pre-Bakke levels of minority applications and enrollment or admissions decisions made about minorities.
"However, the decision was significant because it legitimized and institutionalized the practice of affirmative action in higher education," said co-author John Gruhl, a political science professor at the University of Nebraska.
Their book, "Affirmative Action and Minority Enrollments in Medical and Law School," will be published by University of Michigan Press later this year. Highlights from the book were presented at the American Political Science Association in August.
The Bakke decision was a 1978 Supreme Court ruling which struck down quotas but approved the use of race as one factor in admission policies at colleges and universities. In the case, Regents of University of California v. Bakke, a white student sued for reverse discrimination after being rejected for medical school.
In their study of African American enrollment in medical schools, the two researchers found the greatest jump - from 200 to 1,200 - occurred between 1965 and 1975, three years before the Bakke court case. Then, from 1975 to 1985, enrollments were stagnant, rising only gradually, rather than rapidly as predicted. In the 1990s, however, the numbers climbed sharply to a peak of more than 1,500.
The trends were generally similar for Hispanics, except that the 1975-85 period reported slow upward growth, leveling off in the late 1980s.
"The steep upward climb in minority enrollment had reached a plateau before Bakke and would not resume again until more than a decade after the decision," said Welch, a former professor of political science at NU.
The researchers saw similar conclusions in reviewing African American and Hispanic first-year enrollments in law schools. For African American students, enrollment stayed stagnant from 1975 to 1986, followed by a rather sharp increase beginning in 1987. Hispanic enrollments rose slowly but fairly consistently from 1969 to 1995.
The more influential factors affecting minority applications and enrollments may have been the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which eliminated legal barriers to discrimination; the growing middle class in the African American community; and the large increase in the number of college educated minorities in the late 1980s and 1990s. More families could afford to send their children to professional schools, said Welch and Gruhl.
"Current affirmative action policies are an extremely unsophisticated and blunt instrument whose diverse beneficiaries are not easily understandable to a wider public," Welch said. "The current focus of affirmative action appears to have shifted from compensation for historical wrongs against African Americans to promoting diversity by giving extra opportunities to those from a variety of ethnic groups. A narrowly drawn affirmative action policy with specific, well-defined targets might win more support."
"Recent attacks on Bakke either in the courts or in the states have caused considerable anxiety among supporters of affirmative action and some celebration among opponents," Gruhl said. "But affirmative action alone can make only a little difference in improving the equality of educational and employment opportunity."
The researchers also surveyed admissions officers in medical and law schools about their perceptions of the decision's impact and of their admission policies.
"Over three-quarters of the medical school officials and 63 percent of the law officials claim it affected policies not at all," Welch said. "Only a small minority of schools reported that Bakke changed rather than reaffirmed their admission policies.
"Perhaps, a better route is for Americans to come together and devise more effective ways to overcome racial discrimination. Vigilant enforcement of existing anti-discrimination laws, especially in housing and employment, along with renewed government attention to issues of educational opportunity in our inner cities and rural areas are strategies likely to win more public support than affirmative action."
For example, Welch and Gruhl, who both personally are supporters of affirmative action, noted that the Texas legislature passed a law in 1997 to circumvent a federal court ruling outlawing the use of race in admissions and to offset falling minority applications at the University of Texas. The law essentially substitutes geography for race, requiring all state universities to admit all applicants from Texas high schools who graduated in the top 10 percent of their class. This takes in account racially segregated neighborhoods.
"Affirmative action is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for diversity, and the diversity that many institutions are striving for goes beyond affirmative action categories," the political scientists noted. "The Bakke ruling's actual impact is modest, with its potential effects dwarfed by economic conditions, the dramatic growth in higher education over the last four decades, the increasing ethnic pluralism of American society, and changing attitudes and educational opportunities opened by the Civil Rights Act of 1964."
- Vicki Fong, Science and Research Communications, Pennsylvania State University
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln has become the first university in the Great Plains region to establish a Textile Testing Service to help industry and consumers analyze fabrics. The new services are intended to aid product development and performance and conservation of heirloom and museum textiles.
Cabela's, the national outdoor clothing and outfitting company based in Sidney, and the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., in Lincoln, are two of the first companies to use the services, which include testing for colorfastness, fiber composition and construction, flammability and weather-related tests. Physical examinations of fabric include tests of fabric strength, wrinkle recovery, abrasion resistance, appearance and dimensional change.
The service has been offered for about six months through the Department of Textiles, Clothing and Design, which uses existing lab space and equipment. The lab also does independent testing for consumers and others, said Carol Easley, one of two lab managers for the program.
"Our service is excellent and our fees are competitive," she said. "We provide independent and objective evaluations. Our hope is to provide a service to businesses at a reasonable fee that allow us to be self-sufficient."
The Textile Testing Service will contact businesses regarding establishment of the lab, its services and fees, she said, noting no other such university-affiliated service exists in the central United States.
The lab evaluates textiles in accordance with national and international testing standards by using established methods, said Lisa Woeppel, lab manager. Fees for services range from $15 for basic tests, such as determining impact resistance and how buttons will maintain on a fabric to $100 for more complicated matters, such as evaluating garment appearance after five washings.
The Textile Testing Service also will aid with the identification and dating of thread for historical textiles for the International Quilt Study Center. Other requests for laboratory services have come from a Minnesota company regarding disposable diaper protection. The lab also has performed work regarding ultraviolet protection for fabrics for a Kansas City company.
Cabela's, a large employer in western Nebraska, sought the lab's assistance in several tests, including one to determine "crocking" or whether color from one fabric would transfer to another worn beneath it. The lab also has conducted verification tests on rayon yarns for hoses and tubings supplied to Goodyear by another company, Easley said.
The Textiles Testing Service has funding from the College of Human Resources and Family Sciences and the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
- Peg Strain
A former university employee has been arrested in connection with an apparent embezzlement of $60,000 from the West Central Research and Extension Center.
Sandra Thompson, 44 of Keokuk, Iowa, was arrested Monday by the Lee County (Iowa) Sheriff's Office on three counts of felony theft by deception. Thompson had been employed at WCREC for about two years before resigning last month.
University officials said Nov. 24 that nearly all of the money was private grant money intended to support research at the center.
Gary Hergert, interim director of the center, said bank records indicate that the former WCREC accounting clerk apparently deposited checks written to the university into an employees' sundry fund checking account at First National Bank in North Platte. The clerk then apparently forged checks on that account using the signature of another center employee who was authorized to sign. Hergert said the embezzlement apparently occurred over a six- to 12-month period.
Hergert said the sundry fund account was not a university account, but was owned by the center's employees, who donated their own money. He said the account was established by employees for purchases such as coffee or flowers for hospitalized coworkers.
Accounting personnel at the center discovered shortfalls in university accounts in mid-October, a few days after Thompson left the university's employ. An initial investigation at the center and at the bank indicated embezzlement. On Oct. 21 Hergert contacted Alan Moeller, assistant vice chancellor for finance and personnel at UNL's Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources in Lincoln. IANR oversees all research and extension centers. Moeller called the University Police Department and met with police personnel and the university auditors that day.
An internal auditor from university's Operations Analysis Office in Lincoln went to North Platte Oct. 24 to begin an investigation that revealed the extent of the alleged embezzlement. Ken Cauble, director of the UNL Police Department, which has statewide jurisdiction, went to North Platte Nov. 4 to begin the criminal investigation in conjunction with the office of Lincoln County Attorney Kent Turnbull.
Hergert said the original sundry fund account, which required just one signature for check-writing, has been closed and another opened. The new account requires two signatures on each check, he said.
IANR Vice Chancellor Irv Omtvedt said steps will be taken to prevent another incident.
"We deeply regret that something like this has happened, but I'm confident procedures will soon be in place that will ensure that nothing like this happens again," he said. "We have reviewed internal control procedures with the directors of all the research and extension centers and will institute any additional measures necessary to ensure thorough accountability."
Moeller said he did not yet know how much of the center's loss would be covered by insurance. He said the university plans to file an insurance claim. The university's insurance carries a $10,000 deductible.
-Tom Simons
Turkey will be the centerpiece of many Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner tables this year. Because turkeys may seldom be prepared beyond the holiday season, however, people may need to remember precautions to make the traditional dinner a safe meal.
Proper preparation of the large bird is the main safety factor, said Julie Albrecht, University of Nebraska food specialist. That's because turkeys are grown and inspected according to federal safety guidelines.
Turkeys in retail stores are inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture or by state inspectors who work under standards equal to those of the federal government. The "Inspected for wholesomeness by the U.S. Department of Agriculture" seal ensures that each turkey and its internal organs are wholesome, properly labeled and unadulterated, Albrecht said.
However, even carefully inspected birds must be stored and handled safely, Albrecht said. The USDA requires safe handling instructions on all packages of raw or partially cooked turkey packaged and labeled in federally- or state-inspected plants, or in retail stores. It's up to the consumer to follow those instructions.
Poultry and other meats have legal limits for drug residues and required withdrawal periods before slaughter. Both are set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. No hormones have been approved for use in turkeys, Albrecht added.
Additives in turkeys have limitations, the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources specialist noted. Additives aren't allowed on fresh or minimally processed turkeys. Processed birds can be injected with a basting solution and any additives such as MSG, salt or sodium erythorbate must be listed on the label in descending order.
Follow these tips to cook a turkey safely this holiday season:
- Cheryl Alberts, IANR news writer
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