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College students have long served as the conscience of America, voicing outrage at injustices, whether domestic or abroad, until people in power take action.
The current generation of students is no different, and for the past two years Lafayette students – and faculty members – have been raising awareness of the ongoing genocide in the Sudanese region of Darfur by participating in rallies, holding discussions, lobbying Congress, and organizing fundraisers.
“A lot of students ask me why I care about Darfur, and I think it’s about being an active citizen in your community and an active citizen in humanity and not just standing idly by and watching these atrocities happen,” says Jillian Gaeta ’07 (Middletown, N.J.), who has been at the forefront of student activism at Lafayette.
Gaeta’s interest in Darfur began in Spring 2005, when she was a sophomore enrolled in the colloquium Human Rights and Modern War, developed and taught by Joshua A. Sanborn, associate professor of history.
“We were learning about all of these genocides throughout history, and one day Professor Sanborn gave us an op-ed article on the history of what was happening in Darfur. I thought, ‘Here we are, learning about all these histories, and here is something that is going on right now – and we should do something about it,’” explains Gaeta, a double major in international affairs and French.
Gaeta and five classmates began selling bracelets on campus to benefit the Save Darfur Coalition and gave a brown-bag presentation March 8 to the campus community on the human rights violations occurring in Darfur. Entitled “Not Our Watch” and promoted by an op-ed piece written by Sanborn’s class in The Lafayette, the presentation gained the interest of the Genocide Intervention Fund (now the Genocide Intervention Network), begun by students at Swarthmore College, who asked the Lafayette group to participate the following month in GIF’s “Congress RUSH” event.
On April 6, the group journeyed to Capitol Hill, where they joined 300 students from across the nation rallying in support of the Darfur Accountability Act. The students also lobbied the offices of Pennsylvania’s senators, Rick Santorum and Arlen Specter, and Congressman Charlie Dent, urging them to co-sponsor the legislation.
A year later, on April 30, 2006, Lafayette students returned to Washington, D.C., to join thousands of people gathered on the National Mall for the “Save Darfur: Rally to Stop Genocide,” organized by the Save Darfur Coalition.
Gaeta says the formation, in 2006, of the Lafayette chapter of Amnesty International has played prominently in ongoing student activism. Since the chapter’s inception, four experts in human rights violations have been brought to campus and given presentations on the Darfur situation, Gaeta notes, adding that the group has also held multiple viewings of the documentary film The Darfur Diaries, in which refugees are interviewed about their plight.
Last fall, with a grant from LINC, the Lafayette Intercultural Networking Council, Lafayette’s Amnesty chapter sent 40 students to a New York City rally sponsored by the Save Darfur Coalition on Sept. 17, the Global Day for Darfur. Among the speaking were former Secretary of State Madeline Albright and Larry Cox, director of Amnesty International USA. Student organizers filmed the trip and created a video using rally footage and student and speaker interviews. Later, the video was shown during a campus-wide brown bag discussion.
Proceeds from the “Dance for Darfur,” a semi-formal affair, including dinner, scheduled for 8 p.m. to midnight, Saturday, March 3, in the Bergethon Room, Marquis Hall, will go to the Save Darfur Coalition. Tickets are on sale in Farinon College Center. The dance is sponsored by the United Against Hate Week Committee.
One of the most prominent campus undertakings protesting the violence in Darfur was the result of the joint efforts of students, faculty, administrators, and trustees, who came together to form a an ad hoc committee in January 2006, says Gaeta, who is currently writing a senior thesis on China’s connections to the Darfur crisis, with Sanborn as her adviser. She will participate in the Teach for America program following graduation.
“The committee put in place a framework, so that in the future, when issues of grave moral concern arise, there’s a place where students can address it. There’s an official procedure in place where students can voice their concerns, and those concerns can be dealt with more quickly,” she explains.
On November 6, as part of the ad hoc committee’s response, Lafayette issued a statement condemning the genocide in Sudan, Gaeta explains, which noted that the College’s Investment Committee had sent letters to Lafayette’s external investment managers educating them about the situation in the Sudan, informing them of the College’s outrage at the genocide occurring there, and advising them of the College’s request that its external investment managers not invest Lafayette funds with multinational companies that the College has determined have direct business ties to the Sudanese government and whose actions are believed to further the continuing genocide.
“That’s a pretty big step for Lafayette, because there are not many other educational institutions that have done that,” Gaeta says. “But for Lafayette to not to address it would be a crime – we are an educational institution, and academic institutions are in a unique place to highlight these issues. They are on the cutting edge, and we have to keep up with international issues to show our strength in all areas.”