Image provided by: Texas A&M University
About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 30, 1985)
Aggies hear historic footsteps in record-setting Tulsa game — Page 11 Battalion Serving the University community College Station, Texas Monday, September 30,1985 8 suicides lalarm Indian reservation Associated Press I ST. STEPHENS, Wyo. — In less [hail two months, eight young male Indians have hanged themselves on [he Wind River reservation, a Iparsely populated, 2 million-acre [ract of barren plains and rolling [tills in central Wyoming. The suicides have galvanized dental health agencies, educators, ariests and social workers, but they dmit they are at a loss to.explain the eaths. Counselors who have lived here jail their lives say they have never iseen such a mental health crisis be fore. Since the beginning of the year, there have been at least 48 re ported suicide attempts, compared to fewer than 30 last year, t The suicides have focused a glar ing spotlight on this tight-knit com munity at the base of the Wind River Mountains, where the unemploy ment rate among 6,000 Indians is nearly 80 percent, where many teen agers have no prospects of going to college, where most of the people have a drinking problem, and where there are few recreational facilities for youths. The rash of suicides began Aug. 12, when a 20-year-old jailed in Riv erton for public intoxication hanged himself with his socks. Four days later, Donovan Blackburn, 16, hanged himself with his sweatpants from a tree. Several days after Blackburn killed himself, Darren Shakespeare, 14, hanged himself from a tree with baling twine. Shakespeare had been at Blackburn’s wake and threatened he would be next. This month, five men and teen agers committed suicide, all by hang ing. The latest was discoverea Satur day. There is no mall on the reserva tion, no shopping center, no movie house. The youths are told that they aren’t any worse off than the youths in nearby Riverton or Lander, who also are bored on weekends. But the Indian students aren’t convinced. At least four of the suicides oc curred while the young men were under the influence of alcohol. Stud ies show 51 percent of the students have a drinking problem and 47 per- ave tried an Back in the Saddle Again Photo by JOHN MAKELY Texas A&M quarterback Kevin Murray (14) rides on the shoulders of Roger Vick (43) after Murray’s 59-yard TD pass to Vick during Saturday’s 45-10 Tulsa win. Murray got his first start this season and led the Ags to a school-record 702 yards of to tal offense. Related story, page 11. U.S. security clampdown gains results Associated Press WASHINGTON — The armed services and defense contractors ap pear to be meeting Defense Secre tary Caspar Weinberger’s three- month goal of reducing security clearances by 10 percent. Final figures on the crackdown, which grew out of a Navy spy scan dal, are not expected until next month. But Weinberger’s deadline for an across-the-board, 10 percent reduction in clearances expires to day and some preliminary figures have been compiled. When the cuts were ordered June 11, there were 4.3 million Pentagon employees, congressional aides and contractor employees with clear ances ranging from Confidential to Secret to Top Secret. The idea of slashing the number of individuals with clearances is aimed at both reducing the potential sources of information to the Soviets and freeing investigators to perform more thorough and timely back ground checks. L. Britt Snider, the Pentagon’s principal director for counter-intelli gence and security policy, told a House panel last week that “it does appear that we will meet or exceed the secretary’s 10 percent objective by the first of October.” “As of Sept. 15, we estimate that an overall reduction of approxi mately 8 percent had been achieved . . . ” Snider disclosed. “Each of the military departments has advised that it expects to satisfy the require ment in a timely manner.” Defense contractors “had elimi nated 149,599 existing clearances, or 10.7 percent of the whole” by Sept. 14, Snider continued. “In short, the overall objective has been met.” But Snider also said the Pentagon approved some exceptions to Wein berger’s order. While he declined to offer figures, he said the goal won’t be met by the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency because their employees “have an undisputed need for a clearance.” As for chances of new cuts, Snider said: “I do not anticipate further across-the-b<Wd reductions at this time.” Snider also noted, however, that Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr. has set a goal of reducing Navy clearances by 50 percent as soon as possible, and Weinberger also or dered a 10 percent reduction in the number of new requests for security clearances during fiscal 1986, which begins Tuesday. The Navy’s higher goal of 50 per cent was a direct response to the so- called Walker family spy scandal, which erupted in May with the arrest of John Anthony Walker, a retired warrant officer, who was accused of passing Navy secrets to the Soviet Union over a 20-year period. Because Of Lehman’s special crackdown, Snmer said the service had revoked or reduced th^ number of security clearances by at least 26 percent since the scandal began. A Navy source who requested ano nymity said Fridy the actual total might be as high as 45 percent, but reports were still being received from the field. Before the crackdown, the Penta gon said about 2.5 million military personnel, civilian employees and congressional aides had clearances. Another 1.4 million individuals em ployed by defense contractors held clearances, along with 400,000 mem bers of the Guard and Reserve forces. Of the 4.3 million total, some 622,000 individuals held a Top Se cret clearance in June, while 3.6 mil lion held Secret clearances and the remainder Confidential. Racial violence continues cent have i irugs. St. Stephens administrators ap plied unsuccessfully for a federal grant for an alcohol education pro gram. They are offering programs anyway on a shoestring budget. Stu dents have been trying to support each other since the suicides began, while teachers and counselor gave special attention to high-risk cases. Pat Stoehr, with Fremont Coun seling Service in Riverton, a city bor dered by reservation lands, em phasizes that teen suicide is not unique to the reservation. Teen-agers across the county are under mounting pressure from par ents and peers. Death is perceived as an escape rather than as permanent departure, she says. Riot erupts in British slum district Associated Press A dozen stores were gutted, 26 ci vilians and 10 policemen suffered minor injuries and 45 people were arrested in seven hours of rioting, police said. It was the second racial riot in three weeks in a British urban slum district. Scotland Yard said Brixton in south London erupted Saturday night after police looking for a youth believed armed with a shotgun burst into a home and shot his unarmed mother in her bedroom. But youths, most of them black, marched to the Brixton police sta tion and began hurling firebombs, paving stones, bottles and pieces of lumber. Stores were looted, cars and trucks overturned and set alight. Just three weeks earlier, the Handsworth district of Birmingham, home to predominantly West Indian blacks, went up in flames in a riot that black leaders said was prompted by a police crackdown on drug traf ficking. For Brixton, it was the third riot since April 1981. “Brixton is a cauldron which has been simmering for a long time,” said local councilor Paul Boateng. “It took this incident for it to boil over,” he said. “But it could have happened any time because there is a lot of bitterness and alienation felt by young people who have no status in society.” The injured woman. Cherry Groce, 38, spent the night in the in tensive care unit at St. Thomas Hos pital with bullet fragments in her spine. Doctors said it was too early to tell whether she was paralyzed. Boateng, who is a lawyer and who visited the family, said Groce would sue the police. The Yard immediately called in a top police officer from another force, Assistant Chief Constable John Domaille of West Yorkshire, to conduct an inquiry. Neil Kinnock, leader of the social ist opposition Labor Party, de manded a separate inquiry headed by a judge. The party’s domestic af fairs spokesman, Gerald Kaufman, accused the police of operating un der a “shoot-to-kill policy.” But Home Secretary Douglas Hurd ruled out a judicial inquiry saying that one held by Lord Scar- man after the 1981 rioting had been exhaustive and “a great deal has been acted on.” Labor Party members said jobles sness, running at a record 13.2 per cent nationwide and exceeding 40 percent among urban blacks, was a key cause of the violence. “There are hideous social prob lems in our inner cities,” Hurd said. Farmers’ incomes predicted to drop 40 percent By ABBY L. LECOCQ Reporter The FarmAid concert tried to lessen the problem, but the fact is that farmers across the country are continuing to see their in comes fall. And the situation doesn’t seem to be getting much better. In May 1985, Sen. Lloyd Bentsen asked economists with the Texas A&M Agricultural Extension Service to compare the Texas net farm income for 1984 with 1985. A 20 per cent drop was predicted, but in late July 1985 that figure was recalculated to predict a 40 percent drop. One reason for such a drastic change in predictions is the unanticipated lower prices on most of the major commmodities in Texas, says Dr. Carl Anderson, an agricultural econ omist for A&M. This year there have been large crops of cotton, corn, grain, wheat and soybeans, An derson says, and the anticipated recovery in the livestock industry never occurred. “Livestock prices this year have just been a major disappointment,” Anderson says. In July, prices for feeder cattle dropped 18 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This is partly because of increased supplies and partly because of wheat demand, Ander son says. But the 1985 farm income is expected to drop below the 1984 level for other reasons, too, Anderson says: • Income in 1984, although weak, was bol stered by delayed 1983 payments from the payment-in-kind program started in 1982. • The farm program advanced about 50 percent of expected deficiency payments on the 1985 crop in late 1984. • In the first half of 1984, farm prices were fairly strong because of the large amount of acreage set aside in 1983 as a result of the 1983 payment-in-kind program. So the extra income that came in 1984 was some late 1983 income and some advanced 1985 income, Anderson says. When these facts are removed from the 1984 income, there is a general weakening in crop prices and an unexpected weakening in livestock prices, he says, which causes a sub stantial drop in cash flows. Cotton prices were down about 30 percent in the first eight months of this year, Ander son says, with grain prices being down 10 per cent and egg prices down about 40 percent. But there is another problem for the farmer, Anderson says. Exports. “The exports are the real problem for the crop farmer — that is, the loss of export mar kets,” Anderson says. Gross revenue is falling because of the sag ging export demand for U.S. farm products, says Dr. John Penson, professor of macroagri- cultural finance in the Department of Agri cultural Economics. Also, farmers’ costs have been increasing continuously throughout the 1980s, Penson says. “One cost in particular which has risen sharply is the interest cost of servicing their debt outstanding,” he says. In recent years, this cost has risen from about 5 percent to almost 20 percent of farm ers’ total production expenses, he says. Most farmers have outstanding loans which carry a variable mortgage rate, Penson says. So, as interest rates rise, so does the cost of servicing that debt, he says. “So we have seen revenue declining and cost rising,” Penson says. “And the net conse quence of that is the squeeze on that farm in come.” Anderson says the United State’s economic policy also affects the export business. Large deficits drive up interest rates and strengthen the dollar, Anderson says. The strong dollar makes the price of U.S. commo dities relatively high when price is depre ciated in foreign currencies, which discour ages exports, he says. “But even worse, it encourages foreign pro ducers to produce more because they have suddenly expanded their markets,” Anderson says. I “They can easily produce and expand their exports to them a much higher price but yet be quite a bit under the American price. See ’85 situation, page 14 Scientists find Maya graves Associated Press WASHINGTON — Archaeo logists who unearthed the undis turbed graves of two Maya rulers who died 1,000 years apart said Sunday their discovery contra dicts the notion that ancient Cen tral American civilization de clined before the Spanish conquest. The intact remains of high- ranking officials and accompany ing artifacts show the Maya re tained an advanced political and economic system up to the time European contact destroyed them, the scientists said. “A sophisticated civilization flourished right up to the inva sion of the Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century,” they said in a report to the National Science Foundation, which supported the work and announced the discov ery. Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase, a husband-wife team of anthropologists from the Univer sity of Central Florida, said the burial places found in Belize last month are strong evidence the Maya culture was not in decline during its final centuries from 1350 to 1530, when the Spanish arrived. “During this historic period, most native Americans were killed by disease brought over from Europe,” Diane Chase said in a telephone interview. Because entire native Ameri can empires fell to so few Span iards, some historians argue that See Two, page 14