INSIDE
Letters from Penn State PAGE 5 Staff editorial: Thank you, fans on both sides PAGE 6 More photos of Penn State vigil PAGE 4 Online at www.facebook.com/dailynebraskan
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2011
VOLUME 111, ISSUE 058
DAILY NEBRASKAN DAILYNEBRASKAN.COM
PENN STATE
‘STAYING TOGETHER AND UNITED’ Osborne: Stipend conflicts with
Title IX STAFF REPORT DAILY NEBRASKAN
ANDREW DICKINSON | DAILY NEBRASKAN
Penn State students, alumni and community members gather outside of Old Main for a candlelight vigil Friday night to support victims of sexual abuse.
DOUG BURGER DAILY NEBRASKAN
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — The light that shined on Pennsylvania State University Friday night was a lot brighter than it was two nights earlier. Thousands of students, alumni and community members gathered outside of Old Main, the administration building on campus,
for a candlelight vigil for the victims of a sexual-abuse scandal that shook the university last week. “This has been a trying time,” student body president T.J. Bard said. “But no matter the pain, no matter what sorrow and what anger we feel, it pales in comparison to the pain of those victims and so many millions of victims of child abuse across
the world.” The university and its students received some criticism on Wednesday after riots broke out in response to legendary football coach Joe Paterno’s firing. Rioters flipped a news van on its side and knocked down multiple light polls and street signs. “(Tonight) was really important, because I think
the riots made us look really bad and this vigil kind of brought us all together,” Penn State freshman Ally Gidez said. The vigil lasted about 45 minutes and featured moving personal accounts of abuse. Former Penn State linebacker LaVar Arrington addressed the crowd in support. “It’s not if you get knocked
down,” he said. “It’s if you get back up.” A cappella group None of the Above, made up of Penn State students, sang John Lennon’s “Imagine” and Coldplay’s “Fix You.” The crowd joined in and raised candles in the air. The emotionally charged night ended
VIGIL: SEE PAGE 4
Man on pipeline bike ride meets with Occupy DAN HOLTMEYER DAILY NEBRASKAN
Tom Weis was 1,000 miles into a 1,700-mile bike ride that follows the proposed Keystone XL pipeline route when he stopped in Lincoln Saturday. He wants the proposal, in a word: gone. After months of outcry from Nebraskan environmentalists and conservative landowners, President Barack Obama’s administration announced late last week that it would pause the approval process for TransCanada’s controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline while it looks into routes that don’t go through central Nebraska’s Sandhills. The proposed path through the ecologically sensitive area, which spreads over part of the Ogallala Aquifer, has been a lightning rod for opposition throughout Nebraska. But a substantial segment of the project’s opposition goes further and doesn’t want the pipeline built at all. Weis, of Boulder, Colo.,
SIDDIQUI PAGE 6
has made it his mission to keep that voice on the table. He arrived in Lincoln on Saturday in his “rocket trike,” a reclined tricycle with a bright yellow, submarine-shaped protective shell and small solar panels to power his lights and iPhone, to take part in the regular Occupy Lincoln march that afternoon. For the past month, Weis and his co-activist, Ron Seifert, 30, have put their lives on hold to travel south from the Canadian border in Montana along the proposed route. Along the way, they try to drum up awareness — and opposition — of the project, which has drawn international attention. Upon arrival in Lincoln, he’d covered almost 1,000 miles. So far, Weis said, the response has been very supportive, especially among the Native American communities along the way. Most of the people he meets don’t know enough about the
RALLY: SEE PAGE 3
DAN HOLTMEYER | DAILY NEBRASKAN
Tom Weis rides his “rocket trike” among the marchers of Occupy Lincoln Saturday. He and about a dozen other protesters joined the broader Occupy Lincoln movement to oppose the Keystone XL oil pipeline, and the tar sands oil that would go through it, that has dominated Nebraska politics for several weeks.
ARTS PAGE 7
FOOTBALL PAGE 10
STIPEND: SEE PAGE 3 WEATHER | SUNNY
Protesters aren’t stupid
How bazaar
‘Educating the young kids’
EDUCATION LEVELS CLEAR BETWEEN FANS AND OCCUPIERS
CZECH, RUSSIAN CLUBS TO SHARE ETHNIC FOOD DURING UNION EVENT
COACHES UNITE TO PROVIDE LESSONS TO AMERICA’S YOUNG MEN
@dailyneb | facebook.com/dailynebraskan
Student athletes at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln will not receive the financial support of recent NCAA changes any time soon, according to Nebraska Athletic Director Tom Osborne. On the radio show “Sports Nightly” on Nov. 8, Osborne said it’s a waiting game for the athletic department as administrators figure out how to implement the $2,000 student-athlete stipend approved by the NCAA Division I Board of Presidents on Oct. 27. The stipend would give full-scholarship athletes, as well as those on partial scholarship who receive institutional aid, up to $2,000 to cover living expenses outside of room, board, books, tuition and fees. In the coming weeks and months, Osborne and other athletic department staff will have to decide the best way to distribute the stipend while adhering to Title IX, which would require aid distribution be proportional to the student-athlete population. With 98 men and 47 women on full scholarship at UNL, Osborne said it’s not as easy as cutting all full-grant and aid athletes a check. “We can’t give twice as many men a stipend as we do women,” Osborne said, indicating that it would violate Title IX. “Therefore we would have to select 47 men out of 98 to give the $2,000 or we give every one of our 98 maybe a little less than $1,000.” But the situation the athletic department has found itself in is one few could have expected, according to Osborne and other athletic department officials. “This is something that was unintended and was something no one had figured on,” Osborne said. Before the NCAA rule changes, talk circled about a prorated stipend, he said, where student athletes would receive a proportional amount of the stipend based on their athletic scholarship. For example, a student athlete on a 50 percent scholarship would receive $1,000 of the $2,000 stipend, he said. Osborne said the idea of a pro-rated stipend likely died because it would cover a larger percentage of the studentathlete population at each university and incur higher costs for athletic departments. And like Osborne, Laure
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