University of Nebraska Omaha - Tomahawk / Gateway Yearbook (Omaha, NE)

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by Rathy Parcher Since 1959, the Milo Bail Student Center has been the core of student activity and the only area specifically designed to meet the needs of students with nothing to do. The center became a home for the leisure stricken. For the few brave souls who venture upstairs, offices and study rooms will be found, but for most students, the center is a place to relax, talk, eat, and pass the time until the next class. The MBSC underwent restructuring in 1972, leaving a larger bookstore and less first floor space for students. Students found themselves with a coffeehouse inside and a meeting area outside the new south entrance, complete with abstract clocks that have a time all thier own. The Student Center is characterized by a social caste system of sorts, implied rather than specified. But nonetheless, the order has continued unchanged for years, with faces coming and going but the people somehow remaining the same. The Coffeehouse, in room 118, is the scene of the largest congregation of students, the mighty Greeks, who are attired in fashionably faded T-shirts with letters, numbers, or an occasional UNO stencile. The doors to the coffeehouse are in continuous motion. The doors open; the people sitting at the near tables look up to inspect the intruders. Heads down until the doors swing open again. 22

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Students, armed with their trusty parking stickers, braved the reahties of cruel mathematics again this year. Three into two won ' t go. Each morning, students face the famihar ordeal of attempting to squeeze between two Volkswagons and go unnoticed by Campus Security. During the three week grace period allowed students to purchase permits, 5,695 day and night students rushed to Annex 31. Weeks after the grace period, students were still purchasing permits on a per year or semester basis. It was as if no one had told them that there were only 1,582 spaces available. While things were no better this year, at least they got a Httle worse. Construction of the new library took 337 spaces from grasping students while car pool parking is taking 65 spaces. In parking lot W, west of 66th street, 175 spaces were added, but it ' s obvious students still come up short. In order of importance, faculty lost two spaces, the staff picked up 49 and on the lower end of the social order students lost 262 spaces. All in all, faculty and staff have a third of the number of spaces students have. Since we know the campus is run as a democracy with equaHty for all, there must be five thousand faculty and staff members, or a third the number of students. Some thing went wrong somewhere. The car pool experiment, which received only a lukewarm response last year, picked up some converts this year. Over one hundred car pool permits were sold the first semester. Meanwhile, Elmwood Park and nearby residential districts continue to be camping grounds for hundreds of student cars, many with parking stickers displayed proudly on the rear window. One likely reason for this is that Elmwood Park is no farther from much of the campus than parking lot W, which is over a half mile away from the Administration Building. Solutions to the parking problem filter in, but are shot down just as quickly. Ak-Sar-Ben parking is considered unworkable by the Chancellor unless Elmwood parking is prohibited. Fat chance, respond the students. High-rise parking is retreating further into the background as being too expensive a proposition. The Gateway ' s suggestion of auction- ing parking spaces to even out student and faculty chances for good spaces never got off the ground. The ravine, as we all know, is still a ravine.

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Spray-painted Greek signs hang from the black- beamed ceihng. Notices are tacked up on any available space. People exist in groups in the coffee- house; individuals are banished. Tables littered with cigarette packages and coffee cups hold at least a half dozen people in earnest conversation. There are floaters who grace several tables before finding the right spot. This continues non-stop until the coffee- house reluctantly clears at three for cleaning. The chicks in the coffeehouse wear slacks with hems. Jeans with ragged cuffs are found in the game room. The game room swells with intense young men clustered around the game tables, sometimes a dozen strong, watching motionlessly as the player ' s bulging pockets gradually empty of quarters. The only break is on the half-hour, when the tables exchange these fanatics with new ones. In an hour, they are back, hunched over the tables while an occasional female student stands by staring vaguely into space while her boyfriend gets emotionally involved with a silver ball. Both the coffeehouse and the game room experi- enced a slight surge in activity when The Pit ' s estimated 150 patrons were forced to vacate. The Pit, once the sight of red-eyed card players and students who have been at UNO since the beginning of time, was transformed into office space because of campus construction. The Pit patrons therefore either: A) dispersed to other areas of the Student Center, B) left school when the last card game ended or 23