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Darfur awareness program to educate university |
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Wednesday, 16 April 2008 |
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by JILLIAN SWORDS
News Reporter
The Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies will kick off its month-long Darfur Awareness Program Tuesday.
Administrative assistant for the center Jennifer M. Kirby launched and directed the event.
“I think a lot of people have seen clips in the news and the papers,” Kirby said. “They might know of Darfur and that something’s going on, but as far as details, people don’t know what they as individuals can do to stop it."
Ken Isaacs, the vice president of programs and government relations at Samaritan’s Purse, will speak
Tuesday at 7 p.m. in room 114 of Belk Library & Information Commons.
Having worked in Sudan for 15 years, Isaacs is a firsthand witness to the genocide and effects of
imposed colonial policy in East Africa, Kirby said.
Isaacs will discuss how the conflict has evolved through differences in religion, race and culture.
“The problems in Sudan are really complex but we’re really going to focus our program on Darfur,” Kirby
said. “It was an independent settlement for hundreds of years until 1917 when the British who came
incorporated it into Sudan.”
“The Devil Came on Horseback,” a documentary by former U.S. Marine Capt. Brian Steidle, will show
April 24 at 7 p.m. in the Blue Ridge Ballroom of Plemmons Student Union.
As a military observer, Steidle “had access to parts of the country that no journalist could penetrate,”
according to the center’s Web site. Like Isaacs, he witnessed the systematic government-run genocide
of non-Arab African citizens and emerged trying to raise as much awareness as possible.”
After the film, Black Cat Burrito will host a benefit dance party starting at 10 p.m. Human Pippi
Armstrong, Cashio and Chad from U.S. Christmas will play.
Sudanese refugee Franco Majok will speak May 1 at 6:30 p.m. in the Valborg Theater. Majok plans to
discuss survival and conflict in Darfur and how this relates to conflict in Sudan in the 1990s.
He will examine the roles of foreign countries in this conflict as well.
TransACTION and STAND, two campus clubs, are lending support in the awareness program.
STAND, originally known as Students Taking Action Now Darfur, is now known as the Student
Anti-Genocide Coalition.
Club president and senior philosophy and religion major Brian J. Strivers said over 50 local businesses
have donated over $1,300 in prizes.
A contact table in the student union will sell raffle tickets and Darfur T-shirts donated by the Center for
Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies through the end of the program.
Senior Spanish major and Vice President of Education for TransACTION Michal J. Duffy said this
project is outside of what the club usually works with.
“We’re usually based on gender and sex education and awareness but this is really involved in the
basic need [of being] who you are,” Duffy said. “People either care about [Darfur] or they don’t… We
[need to] get them [past] the hype and say ‘this is related to you.’”
Kirby also stressed the importance of being up-to-date on current events in remaining culturally aware.
Strivers is of the same vein of thought.
“For me it’s just personal,” he said. “This has been going on since 2003 and more than half a million
people have been killed, close to three million kicked out of their homes… In 1994, the international
community said it was never going to let something like his happen again [after Rwanda]…but really,
nothing’s happened.”
He also encouraged participation and said for a democracy to truly be effective, students should have
as active a role in their government as possible, and awareness is the first step.
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