Lacking Confidence 👩‍🎓

The Lincoln Ledger: November 21st, 2025

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The Lincoln Ledger
November 21, 2025

Happy Friday Ledgers,

This week’s Ledger is best paired with a glass of whiskey, or whatever the person in charge of placing traffic cones on Pine Lake Road between 26th and 29th was drinking.

Which lane is open? Which one’s closed? Can you turn left? Right? Into traffic? Who’s to say.

Lincoln’s finest maze. No prize at the end.

In this week’s issue:

  • No Confidence: UNL Faculty Senate votes no confidence in Chancellor Bennett

  • What To Do: Fattoush, CYOA, and the JLL Holiday Home Tour

  • Sportz: It’s the fumblerooski double flea flicking dog leg left! - Announcer Somewhere

  • Neighborhood Watch: South Street Sleeper

With one week till Thanksgiving, we’d invite you all to relish in the sounds of the season. 

- Landon

Last Week’s Poll Results:
Would you watch "Home for the Gobbledays"?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Yes (8) (53%)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ No (3) (21%)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ I prefer to scroll Netflix instead of choosing something to watch (4 (26%)

NO CONFIDENCE

UNL Faculty Senate votes no confidence in Chancellor Bennett.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln is facing one of its most turbulent moments in recent history. With a $27.5 million budget cut looming, proposals for department mergers and program cuts have ignited intense debate over the university’s future.

On Tuesday, the UNL Faculty Senate, an advisory group of professors and department heads, cast a historic vote of no confidence in Chancellor Rodney Bennett, marking the first such vote in the university’s 157-year history.

According to reporting by the Nebraska Examiner, faculty members cited that the Chancellor and his administration failed to collaborate proactively or transparently on addressing budget shortfalls. Some also alleged that faulty or inconsistent data was used in the analysis that informed which programs were recommended for elimination.

What is a no confidence vote?… A vote of no confidence signals that a group no longer believes a leader is suitable for their position. While the vote carries significant symbolic weight, it does not remove a person from their role.

Programs recommended for elimination… Four programs are currently proposed for closure, pending approval from the NU Board of Regents in December:

  1. Earth and Atmospheric Sciences - $1.85 million

  2. Statistics - $1.75 million

  3. Educational Administration - $1.69 million

  4. Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design - $1.45 million

What happens next… The Faculty Senate’s decision will now be reviewed by NU President Jeff Gold and the Board of Regents, who will determine any potential next steps.

📌 Why It matters… UNL employs more than 6,000 people, making it the third-largest employer in Lincoln. Beyond academics, the university’s financial health has a direct impact on the city’s workforce, research output, and broader economic stability.

🕵 Sources: The Real Journalists

WHAT TO DO

via giphy

What to do weekend header here.

🍛 Dinner at Fattoush
You’ll kick off the weekend with dinner out, because we all know the next two weeks are reserved for leftovers and fridge Tetris. On deck: Fattoush, a longtime local favorite for Middle Eastern done right. We recommend the Chicken Biryani or the Beef Kabob Plate.

🆒 Two types of nerd (choose your own adventure)

  • Option 1) History Dad → Falling deep into a a pre-middle aged fascination with U.S. history and its military, this weekend feels like perfect weekend to go and see some stuff that flies really fast. Head to the Strategic Air and Space Museum 30 minutes outside of Lincoln and see craziest bits of engineering that the world has ever produced. They also have a new Hubble Telescope exhibit that has all the science girls and boys feening. 🔭
    ➡️ Your Pre-Museum Hype Video

  • Option 2) Drama Kid → There’s rarely a good reason to hit the movie theater these days, until now. Wicked: For Good lands this weekend, and it’s the perfect pre-holiday escape. Load the family into the car, fire up the soundtrack, and prepare for the next three months to be soundtracked by “Defying Gravity.”

    ➡️ Your Pre-Show Pump Up 

🧷 Junior League of Lincoln - Holiday Home Tour
One of our very own Ledger readers sent this in, and we’re glad they did. This Sunday, you’ll grab a last-minute ticket to the Junior League of Lincoln’s Holiday Home Tour, running from 1:00 to 4:00 PM. It’s a rare chance to walk through a lineup of amazing homes in the Knolls neighborhood, each dressed to the nines in full holiday mode.

Gather design ideas you may or may not act on, daydream about crown molding, and pretend you're in the market for a second home. Bonus: ticket proceeds benefit the Junior League of Lincoln Diaper Bank, so your wandering counts as philanthropy.

SPORTZ

Sporting headlines from around the capital.

NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH

South Street Sleeper

You can have it all… wel almost.

2108 South 24th Street has all the makings of a renovation dream. Room after room full of potential, dramatic "before" shots just waiting to become "after" content. It’s not for the faint of heart. A big house means big projects, and there are plenty of them. But the bones are here.

You’ll work the projects with purpose. That rug-shaped stain in the carpet? Gone. The third-floor flex space? That’s your future home gym, movie room, or maybe even the place you start your Cricut empire. Bit by bit, the transformation takes shape, and the home becomes yours. So much so, you might find yourself spinning up a TikTok account to document the whole thing.

But now, the catch. While you can have it all, you can’t go back in time.

South Street was once a neighborhood anchor, tree-lined, walkable, and full of front yards that felt connected to the block. Then came the 1960s, and with them, a street widening project that turned a cozy corridor into a high-traffic thoroughfare. The result? A house that should feel central now feels a little stranded. Not because of the home itself, but because of lasting impacts of city planning decision that stripped the street of a bit of its soul.

Still, for the right buyer, that doesn’t have to be the end of the story. This home deserves someone who sees what it is, and what it could be, with a little vision, a lot of patience, and zero fear of pulling up flooring.

The Details:

  • 4 beds, 4 baths

  • 4,210 sq/ft

  • Built in 1918

❤️ KEEP:
The tile, the stair railing, and the mantle in the living room. Do not touch them. We are watching.

🗑️ TOSS:
The scary-looking boiler in the basement, the vines, the high-gloss black bathroom paint, some truly cursed wallpaper selections, and all of the panel board in the flex space.

CHECKLIST

An over-ambitious weekend to-do list.

  • Rake your leaves

  • Pick up more leaf bags

  • Clean the leaves out of the gutter

  • Rake more leaves

  • Blow the remaining leaves around

  • Leaf your yard ambitions for the spring

HEADLINES

More news from around the capital.

🐯 Weekly Wildcard:
One headline (or post) we never saw coming.

ABOUT TLL

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