Monday, Sept. 30, 1985
Nation/World
University Daily Kansan
11
Indians face suicide crisis
The Associated Press
ST. STEPHENS, Wyo. — In less than two months, eight young male Indians have hanged the melesons on the Wind River reservation, a sparsely populated, 2 million-acre tract of barren plains and rolling hills in central Wyoming.
The suicides have galvanized mental health agencies, educators, priests and social workers, but they are at a loss to explain the deaths.
Counselors who have lived here all their lives say they have never seen such a mental health crisis before. Since the beginning of the year, there have been at least 48 reported suicide compared with fewer than 30 last year.
The suicides have focused a glaring spotlight on this tightly knit community at the base of the Wind River Mountains, where the unemployment 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 Riverton for public intoxication hanged himself with his socks. Four days later, 16-year-old Donovan Blackburn with his self 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 teenagers committed suicide, all by hanging. The latest was discovered Saturday.
Stone said many students thought Blackburn's suicide was a courageous act.
On a recent Friday, Stone was preparing for a suicide prevention session with some students. She apologized for not having an organized program, explaining she had spent the morning admitting one student to the mental health hospital in nearby Lander and was making arrangements to admit another. The two students has threatened suicide.
Students in her session complained that there was nothing for them to look forward to that weekend, that all the tribal recreation money went for bingo, and that they had no cars in which to go into town to cruise.
At least four of the suicides occurred while the young men were under the influence of alcohol. Studies show 51 percent of the students have a drinking problem and 47 percent have tried drugs.
St. Stephens administrators applied unsuccessfully for a federal grant for an alcohol education program.
Tombs indicate Mayan progress
United Press International
WASHINGTON — Archaeologists reported yesterday that they had discovered intact burial places of two Mayan rulers in what is now Belize.
The more recent grave was that of a provincial ruler who reigned over a territory of more than 8,800 square miles, the archaeologists reported in an announcement by the National Science Foundation.
August by Arlen F. and Diane Z. Chase, married professors in the department of archaeology and sociology at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
The sites are at Santa Rita Corozal, on a sea bluff encircling the modern town of Corozal, the third largest urban area in Belize.
The 1,500-year-old tomb, apparently that of the king, was ornate and contained dozens of objects, included various vessel vessels, masks and a skeleton.
The more recent site, dating to the 1480s, was a simple grave, also containing a skeleton with jewelry.
The burial sites were discovered in
Also in the later tomb were the remains of another person that had been riddled with stingray spines and a copper needle, evidence of ritual blood-letting.
The finds were untouched by looters, unlike many other important Mayan sites, Diane Chase said.
The Mayan civilization reached its peak from A.D. 300 to 900.
SAN FRANCISCO — Surprising study results for a controversial operation to correct nearsightedness may dampen some of the enthusiasm for the surgery undergone by 100,000 Americans, the head of the research team reported yesterday.
The key finding at the end of the second year of follow-up of 435 patients was that one-third of them suffered visual fluctuations long after their eyes were expected to have healed from the surgery, said Dr. George Waring, professor of ophthalmology at Emory University in Atlanta.
United Press International
Study critical of eye surgery
But some initial reports of car tailights taking on a glaring, starlike appearance and other fluctuations after the procedure, radial keratotomy, were expected to diminish with time.
The study, financed by the National Eye Institute, was the first major examination of the microsurgical procedure to correct myopia or nearsightedness, which is suffered by 11 million Americans.
"Our most important finding was that about one-third of the patients still had fluctuating vision
during the second year. This is a big problem," Waring reported at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.
"We were surprised that in fact the cornea may take two to three years to heal in some people."
The results of the "Prospective Evaluation of Radial Keratotomy," or PERK, study, seemed, at least in part, to support critics who have questioned the reliability, predictability and long-term side effects of the operation.
In addition, in one-fourth of those who underwent the operation in both eyes, the results differed significantly for each eye, causing asymmetric vision.
The cuts flatten the front of the cornea, which sits over the pupil like a crystal over a watch face. The distance from the cornea to the back of the eye is shortened and thus the near-sightedness is corrected.
In radial keratotomy — the theory of which was espoused as early as the late 1800s and the modern version of which was first performed in the United States in 1978 — the surgeon uses a diamond-tipped knife to make eight cuts in the cornea.
Dish to track aliens' messages
The Associated Press
dish is part of the most powerful radio-scanning system ever used to hunt aliens.
HARVARD, Mass. — With the touch of a lever, "E.T." director Steven Spielberg yesterday inugurated a search for real-life extraterrestrials, switching on a giant antenna that astronomers hope will detect radio signals sent from outer space.
Capable of scanning 8.4 million radio channels, the dish marks an escalation of such efforts by The Planetary Society, which scans the skies for signs of life from its Oak Ridge Observatory in Harvard, a small town northwest of Boston.
Paul Horowitz, a Harvard University professor who designed the 84-foot communications dish, said. "This marks the beginning of a really powerful search that has a decent chance of finding something." The
Since 1963, the space-watching group had been searching with a simpler scanner, which picked up only 180,000 radio channels.
Carl Sagan, the popular science writer and president of the Planetary Society, who joined Spielberg, Horowitz and other astronomers at the observatory to dedicate the antenna, said, "It's the most sophisticated search for extraterrestrial intelligence in human history."
ect Meta, was built with the help of a $100,000 grant from Spielberg.
Horowitz said the antenna was capable of reaching to the edges of the known galaxy. If there is life on other planets, he said, "this kind of communications system can do the job."
The new antenna, known as Proj-
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Slide Show:
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Big 8 Room, Kansas Union
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located next to the Kansan boxes for your own copy
of the
Student Senate Budget Book
boxes
Come see our large selection of spirits, cordials & liqueurs before October 1.
-Paid for by the Student Activity Fee.
Images.Imported & Domestic Wine.Knox.Party Planning.Vintage Wines.Case Discounts.Over 70 Beers
Spirits Down? (Before the federal tax increase they are.)
If you want to know where your
goes, look in the campus distribution
money
SENIORS Announcing Hilltopers
The Jayhawker Yearbook is happy to announce the Hilltoppers. The Hilltopper Awards were established in the 1930's as the Jayhawker's way of recognizing those seniors who have made high calibre contributions to the University and/or the Lawrence community and have consistently displayed unselfish, responsible leadership in non-academic areas of campus life. The award was reestablished in 1984 in order that outstanding seniors may once again be recognized.
Criteria for selection includes:
—involvement and leadership in campus and community activities
activities
—unselfish service to the campus and community
respect of the nominee's peers as-well-as his or her professors
—references that can address the quality of the nominee's service.
-a GPA of around 3.0,however grades will not play an extremely important part in the selection
The nominations will be screened by a committee that includes KU faculty, student representatives, and the Jayhawker staff. Anyone can nominate a senior for this award and seniors can nominate themselves by picking up an application. Nomination forms and applications will be available at the Organizations and Activities Center, 403 Kansas Union, and the Yearbook Office, 121 B Kansas Union. Deadline for acceptance of nominations is Fri., Oct. 11, and the deadline for applications is Fri., Nov. 1, 1985.
nineteen hundred eighty-six
JAYHAWKER