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Helpline answers all
By Lynn Silhasek
What do you do when you get a phone call from a
person asking for help because his teeth turned black
after eating some soup?
Merrit Warren doesn't laugh. Nor does he hang up.
As a staff member of Helpline, he reaches for the
Betty Crocker Cookbook. Or the world almanac. Or the
Poison Control Center telephone number if everything
else fails.
Warren and the six other students who staff the
campus telephone information and counseling service
(Helpline) don't get calls about biack teeth every night.
More than trivia questions
The calls they do receive include more than just the
"how-far-is-it-from-Lincoln-to-Bozeman, Montana,"
trivia question, according to Craig Johnson, Helpline
director.
Those who have dialed Helpline's number, 472-3311,
include people with drinking problems, people wanting
information about venereal disease, and people who
are just lonely, Warren said.
According to Johnson, Helpline receives one or two
personal crisis calls a day. The procedure for these
calls is to provide "emotional first aid," to help the
people feel better at the end of the call by getting them
to talk about their feelings, Johnson said.
Helpline staff members then may refer the person to
other community agencies that can provide long-term
counseling or treatment, he said.
Advice limited
Phone counselors are limited in the amount of advice
they can give callers "because all the person has to do
is hang up the phone" if he or she doesn't like what the
counselor says, Johnson said.
Another factor limiting phone counseling is that a
large part of communication is nonverbal "and wo
can't tell (facial expressions and gestures) over the
piiuntf," ii Seiu.
Most callers, (including both students and faculty)
who phone about personal problems call because they
find it easier to talk to counselors and remain
anonymous than to talk to a person .face to face,
Johnson said.
Requests for phone numbers
But nearly 35 per cent of the 2,000 calls Helpline
receives monthly are requests for student phone
numbers and addresses, Johnson said. Helpline has
names, numbers and addresses of currently enrolled
students.
And in preparation for the trivia calls, staff members
have on hand a battery of maps, bulletins, textbooks,
statistics and an index containing information about
everything from the name of Sky King's airplane
("Songbird") to the names of Santa's reindeer.
And a calculator, for requests such as, "How many
kernels of corn are In a 50-lb. bag of seed corn?"
The answer? Johnson said he told the caller to fake a
random sample of 250 kernels, weigh them and transfer
the weight Into pounds. Divide the pounds by 250, and
then by 50 pounds, he said, and the answer will be
within 5 per cent of the correct number.
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