Students in Professor Paul Joseph's peace and justice studies class are currently camped out on the Tisch patio to present their student-made film on the genocide in Sudan, raise money, receive signatures for their petitions and give out pamphlets.
These activities, which will run until Dec. 10, are part of the students' semester-long campaign to generate awareness and activism on behalf of the international crisis.
Sudan - specifically the Darfur region - has become a hot topic of discussion since the displacement of about 1.8 million people as a result of fighting between government-sponsored Arab militias and black rebel forces.
The fighting has killed 50,000 and left as many as 1.8 million people homeless.
Many government and NGO's have been reluctant to classify the deaths and displacement as a "genocide," as the term implies intent.
"Nevertheless, we believe that in the four sites we surveyed, high mortality and family separations amount to a demographic catastrophe,'' said Dr. Evelyn Depoortere of Epicenter, a Paris-based research arm of the aid agency Doctors Without Borders, to the New York Times.
While reading about the bloodshed, accounts of rape and torture and a mounting death toll in Sudan, the students of the peace and justice studies class were outraged.
"When you read about that kind of stuff, you have to do something," freshman Louise Place said - and so they did.
Place and her classmates organized a campaign to bring awareness on this issue.
"We spoke to Jo-Ann Michalak, director of Tisch Library," freshman Annie Berndtson said. "We told her about our crazy plan and that we needed her support."
The banner of the students' tent on the library patio reads "The World Pledged Never Again After the Holocaust."
While reading Chris Hedges' "Wars of Force," one of the readings in the Peace and Justice Studies class and digesting accounts of the Rwandan genocide, freshmen Julia Nagel and Michael Eddy were inspired to make a film about the Sudan Crisis so that people would be aware and take action.
When asked what she wanted the film to accomplish, Nagel said, "I want people to do something about this. I want them to write to their state representatives and to be concerned."
Nagel is one the many peace and justice studies students involved in the Sudan campaign project. Berndtson is doing her part by working at a booth to get students to sign petitions and wear green ribbons, which she hopes will promote discussion of the genocide.
The location of the project was important, organizers said. They wanted to set it up in front of the Tisch library, an area that experiences heavy traffic throughout the day.
"We pushed to get it outside; we wanted it to be intrusive," Berndtson said.
The students' task involved volunteer for three to four-hour shifts. "We met every Tuesday in the Tower Caf?©," Place said. "Professor Joseph wanted this to be a student-led project."
The students worked independently, only relying on Joseph to provide them with equipment and funding, which came from his department.
The students are very close to Joseph and say that he has inspired their current action.
Other universities have made similar efforts. Three Wesleyan students recently released a compilation CD entitled "Afrobeat Sudan Aid Project," which will be available on I-Tunes, with all proceeds going to Darfur. The students who organized the CD wanted to draw attention to this "humanitarian crisis."
At the Tufts project's conclusion, the students will send their petition to the government of Sudan and to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. The funds that they acquired will be donated to the American Refugee Committee.
