A recent National Student Leadership Conference titled “A Call to Action for Darfur” has sparked the creation of a new student group on campus called Wesleyan Students Take Action Now: Darfur (WESTAND).
The group is working in conjunction with colleges across the country to end what the U.S government declared to be a genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region.
WESTAND hopes to raise awareness of the situation and inspire action. One of the objectives of the organization is to get the United States government actively involved in the crisis. According to WESTAND, currently the U.S. population is not expressing a great enough desire for intervention and therefore the government is largely ignoring the atrocities.
The group is organized into three committees that will communicate with each other regularly. One group will be responsible for fundraising, one for advocacy, and the other for raising awareness.
“All the groups go hand in hand, but are separated to be able to come up with and execute ideas in an organized way,” Ahles said
The group plans to host many events over the course of the semester to increase awareness and to raise money. They will be tabling around campus, asking students to sign printed letters to government officials that urge the U.S. to intervene in Sudan. Members of WESTAND will take care of mailing the letters.
Posters displaying facts and statistics have been placed around campus and in many dormitory bathrooms. The group also plans on wearing bright green t-shirts weekly to display solidarity and spread awareness around campus.
As a fundraiser, the group is planning an Afro-Beat concert in April and the construction of a model refugee camp to be set up outside of Olin Library. These activities are intended to attract students to participate in the group while also raising funds.
The current situation is the result of a civil war that has been taking place in Sudan for over 20 years between black Africans and Sudanese Arab Muslims. A militia group supported by the Sudanese government called the Janjaweed, which roughly means “evil horsemen” or “devil on horseback,” is now attacking black Africans in Darfur.
Students who attended the National Student Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C., which was hosted by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, were inspired to get more Wesleyan students involved in the effort. A large group of students attended a meeting on Feb. 14.
In Sept. 2004, the U.S. government declared that the situation in Darfur, Sudan constitutes genocide.
“In the same breath, however, the government stated that they couldn’t intervene because of the amount of military personnel and money in Iraq,” said WESTAND member Matt Allie ’08.
The UN Security Council has been slow to pass any significant sanctions or impose punishment on the Sudanese government because of China and Russia’s veto power. China is Sudan’s main oil buyer and Russia is Sudan’s main weapons distributor.
Currently the African Union is trying to stop the genocide, but it has little power due to low funds and poor organization. The Union aims to place neutral military personnel to guard villages, using violence only for defense.
“We shouldn’t let this happen again,” Ahles said. “Wesleyan students have no idea about murder and rape on the scale that it is happening in Sudan. We have to realize that we are lucky, but no more deserving than the victims in Sudan; we are all human. It would be fantastic if we could cooperate with other students and gain the authority to save lives.”
At the National Student Leadership Conference, hundreds of students from 92 schools around the country united to learn about the situation in Sudan and what can be done by American citizens to end the humanitarian crisis. At the conference, everyone was asked to write letters to government officials to encourage U.S. intervention.
“It was very impressive,” said Ben Ahles ’08, who attended the Conference in D.C. “The conference was very motivating and life-changing.”
WESTAND holds weekly meetings on Monday nights at 10 p.m. in the MPR in the Campus Center.
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