Standing up for the bullied
OU creates a STAND chapter to help stop genocide in Africa.
By Maria Fisher, Staff Writer
May 10, 2007 | 9:32 p.m.
STAND, the Student Anti-Genocide Coalition, has welcomed a new chapter of its national membership here at Ohio University. The group began during winter quarter this year and has already had an effect by its refusal to take injustice sitting down.
As free-thinking, fashionably clad, American twenty-somethings at our nice, safe university, we OU students are relatively comfortable. Some may even call us spoiled. We aren't scouring trash dumps for lunch. We don't walk miles just to find some drinking water. We aren't being killed for the color of our skin or the god we worship.
But we're not criminal or lazy just because of our status. And every now and again, some of us rise up and give the world – and ourselves – concrete proof of that. Proof that we aren't just sitting around, sleeping in and beer-ponging while much of our surrounding world sits light years behind us economically, socially and politically. STAND is a group of just that sort of determined, action-oriented students.
In 2003, rebel groups attacked the Sudanese government claiming that there was an unequal distribution of economic resources among the people of the Darfur region of Sudan. These resources, regardless of their distribution, were already strikingly sparse in this part of Africa. To add to the problem, there is also a religious divide in the region between the African Muslims and the Middle Eastern Muslims. The rebel groups challenged that the Sudanese government favored the Middle Eastern Muslims.
These and several other problems have led to our century's first genocide, in which the government is more or less wiping out the lower class to conserve resources. So far, the mass killings have stolen 400,000 lives with the number rising daily. Darfur was originally home to six million people, but the violence and poverty have forced an involuntary displacement of 2.5 million African Arabs – mostly to the nearby nation of Chad. But these refugees are also prey to Janjaweed militias (reportedly supported by the Sudanese government) as well as the perils of extreme poverty. Meanwhile, 90 percent of all villages in Darfur have been destroyed.
Lindsay Caldwell, OU senior and African Studies major says young people are becoming educated in a much more globalized way, thus the situations in places like Darfur are much more well-known now than they may have been a few years ago. With movements like the Invisible Children campaign (though concentrated more on Uganda than Darfur), movies such as "Blood Diamond" and the push for overall betterment of global communication, Americans have become relatively much more educated recently on the tragic goings-on of their not-so-far-away fellow humans. But Caldwell recognizes that whether Americans were educated or not, the genocide would still be taking place.
She also added, "you don't have to be an expert on what's going on to do something about it."
Earlier this year, Caldwell became aware of the National STAND campaign, which began in September of 2004 by an equally ambitious and socially conscious student at Georgetown University. Originally an acronym for "Students Taking Action Now Darfur," STAND's agenda has since been changed to the more all-encompassing, "A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition." The national group's mission statement, as stated on its Web site, is "to empower individuals and communities to prevent and stop genocide." The campaign now has over 600 college and high school chapters, and Caldwell wanted to add OU to that list.
Her investigation led her to Ann Araps, an OU sophomore and marketing major who had also called the National STAND offices independently of Caldwell, asking for information on how to start a chapter. The two girls met each other and decided to work together.
They contacted OU's Campus Life offices located in Baker Center and discovered they would have to form a constitution and bylaw, appoint a president and treasurer, obtain a faculty advisor and attend a club Officer Training put on by Campus Life, during which they learned several club-heading tips, such as how to fundraise, etc. They then reserved a room in Bentley for meetings.
"There's a very bureaucratic way of going about everything," Caldwell said on forming the club.
The club's first meeting was the second week of Spring Quarter, and they now meet weekly on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. in Bentley 135.
"I'm still learning about all this," Caldwell said of running the club with her co-founder, Araps. But she knew she wanted to create an organization of students that wouldn't just talk, but would act.
"I don't necessarily want to concentrate too much on raising awareness, because I feel like most people are aware now," she said. "I just want to empower people to believe they can do something."
Caldwell and Araps used the model of club organization provided on STAND's Web site to create three separate committees within the club, each with their own objective: advocacy, fundraising and awareness.
"The advocacy committee handles things like political action; lobbying, letter writing, and divestment," Caldwell said.
Divestment is a huge task, she said, one that she hopes to "get the ball rolling" on before she graduates this June and that will continue to be pursued by the club after she's gone. It involves raising awareness to local communities of the fact that because of the large scope of mutual funds, businesses – like Ohio University – could unknowingly be supporting the Sudanese government.
"I can't tell you that OU is [supporting Sudan] for certain, but I am pretty sure most universities have at least some connection to it," she said. Hypothetically, she said, student tuition could be supporting the genocide.
While the advocacy committee concentrates on this task, the fundraising committee exists to raise money for the OU chapter of STAND as well as the national organization, which donates much of its resources to the African Union soldiers already fighting for justice in Darfur. These armies are severely under-funded and under-armed with only 7,000 soldiers in all to defend a region the size of Texas – a state that has 3,000 officers patrolling the city of Dallas alone.
The third committee is the awareness committee, which seeks to host speakers and hold events – "anything that brings attention," Caldwell said. Currently, the committee is working with United Campus Ministries as well as Amnesty International to host a candelight vigil May 14 at 8 p.m. on the West Portico of Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium. The vigil will proceed much like the recent one held after the shootings at Virginia Tech.
Caldwell shared her sympathy for the victims of Seung-Hui Cho's rampage in Virginia, but she also lamented that we can't seem to forge that same kind of horrified reaction for what happens on a daily basis in Africa. "Why can't we get that kind of sadness?" she said.
But she still finds herself immensely inspired by how much interest OU'S STAND chapter has received. "Even people who aren't majoring in Afircan studies, like me, are interested!" she said.
Caldwell also stressed that membership in the OU chapter is strictly voluntary and is hardly concentrated on commitment. Other than the committee leaders, no one has to be at every meeting or take part in every activity. "The meetings are the least important part of what we do," said Caldwell, emphasizing again her determination to not talk, but act. "You might not be able to make it to the meetings. But you can write a letter. You can come to our events..."
Recently, STAND took nine members to "Displace Me," a nation-wide event put on by Invisible Children. Students built cardboard "houses" to live in for the night to experience life as millions of displaced Africans do. The OU chapter went to the event held in Pittsburgh, PA. "Nine was a great number, I thought, especially for a group just starting out," Caldwell said.
As STAND flourishes here at OU, Caldwell and Araps have noticed something that may or may not have any real significance, but is still noticeable; there are definitely more girls involved than guys – which is becoming somewhat of a trend in humanitarian groups like these.
"I'm not really sure why that is," said Araps. "Maybe girls hear about the situation and are more emotional immediately than guys," she guessed."
"I've never really put much stock in that," Caldwell said, "but I guess I wasn't surprised by it."
But regardless of the gender of its members or the regularity of its meeting attendance, OU can be proud of its STAND chapter who is not just sitting down – but standing up.
For more information, visit STAND's Web site.