LARAMIE - As pictures of devastation flashed on a screen, international students at the University of Wyoming gathered Wednesday to memorialize victims of the Dec. 26 tsunami and appeal for money for disaster relief.

"Right now I think we are coming together as a community and taking steps to help those people that are in need," Paul Pswarayi, a student from Zimbabwe, a South African country not affected by the tsunami, told the group of upwards of 30 in the spacious Yellowstone Ballroom of the Wyoming Union.

Tom Buchanan, UW vice president for academic affairs, told the group he often has to speak at events of one kind or another, and "sometimes the events are happy, sometimes they are sad, but I am struggling with what to say today."

Noting that the death toll from the huge wave equals one-third of Wyoming's population, Buchanan said that nevertheless it is only one of many disasters in various parts of the world.

"Four million died in the Congo, 70,000 in Sudan, 5 million children died of hunger, 3 million from AIDS, scores of thousand from wars and massacres," he said. "In all of these other events n war, pestilence, plague, poverty n there are villains and there are things we can do, and try we must. The tsunami was different. It was about nature. Nature doesn't punish. Nature doesn't seek revenge. Nature simply is."

"This is about the indifference of nature," Buchanan said. "The universe does not owe us sympathy, but we owe each other sympathy."

Noting that rivals appear to be joining in disaster relief efforts, he said, "This isn't about empire. This isn't about oil. Tsunamis have no politics."

Mary McGinty of Newcastle, vice president of the Associated Students of the University of Wyoming, told the group that Americans received much aid from abroad after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and "Now it is our time to open our arms."

As the students and Buchanan spoke, pictures flashed on the screen showing a muddy street strewn with bodies, a man holding a dead child in his arms, parents grieving their lost ones.

Pramod Singh, a graduate student from India who was interviewed on his way to the memorial, said the family of a friend of his lost their home in Madras in southeastern India, an area hit hard by the quake.

Shafika Khaleel, a student from Madras who presided at a table where donations were being received, said her family fortunately escaped any harm in the disaster.

Star-Tribune correspondent W. Dale Nelson can be reached at wdnelson@bresnan.net.