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