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From: ag5@pucc-i (Henry C. Mensch)
Newsgroups: net.college,net.misc
Subject: Suicide Pills at Brown Univ.
Message-ID: <677@pucc-i>
Date: Tue, 16-Oct-84 23:06:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: pucc-i.677
Posted: Tue Oct 16 23:06:48 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 19-Oct-84 05:44:12 EDT
Organization: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Lines: 50

<>

copied without anyone's permission from The Chronicle of Higher
Education, 17 October 1984

Providence, RI:  Undergraduates at Brown University voted last week on
a proposal asking the university health service to stock poison
"suicide pills" for use upon request in the even of a nuclear war.

About 700 students signed petitions to put the referendum on the ballot
for Brown's student elections, and student government officials said
more students than in several years voted in the elections.

A Brown administrator said that even if the initiative passed, the
university would not stock the pills.  "We do not accept the
alternative of stockpiling suicide pills," said Robert A. Reichley,
vice-president for university relations.  "We will not do it no matter
how this turns out."

However, Mr. Reichley said the university did not dismiss the motives
behind the referendum: "There is a real fear of nuclear war.  We take
that very seriously."

Sponsors of the initiative said they had succeeded in raising
consciousness among students.  "We think that the potential of a
nuclear war for destruction is so great that it will not only destroy
our civilization, but our whole value system," said Jason Salzman, a
junior and the organizer of Students for Suicide Tablets.  "Suicide
would have a whole different meaning."

Mr. Reichley said interest in the referendum had sparked discussion
among the students and faculty.

Several discussions and forums were held last week to consider nuclear
issues.

"I don't think anyone really expected them to stock the pills," said
Beth M. Grossman, a senior and president of Brown's undergraduate
council.  "That's not really the purpose of it.  It's more a symbolic
thing."

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