Rowan Students Condemn Darfur Atrocities

As America grapples with its worst economic downturn in decades, a group of Rowan students are collecting clothes for people facing much harsher conditions - rape, forced migration, outright genocide.

Five years of turmoil in the Darfur region of Sudan has left more than 300,000 people dead at the hands of the Sudanese government or government-backed militias. More than 2.5 million others were forced from their home in flight for their life.

Though reports of the continuing genocide are often lost in today's 24/7 news cycle, a growing body of college students are deploying the violence and calling for it to end.

Kiosks and discussion groups on Darfur Day

On November 10, members of Rowan's acclaimed branch of the Public Relations Student Society of America sponsored Darfur Day: A Day of Awareness, in the Chamberlain Student Center to draw attention to the strife.

Leia D'Amboise, vice president of advocacy for PRSSA, said the event followed a six-month letter writing campaign in which students sought to pressure companies who deal with China because the Chinese, it is believed, supply the Sudanese government with weapons in return for oil.

"We wrote letters to sponsors of the Beijing Olympics asking China to cease involvement in Sudan," D'Amboise said recently.

Ultimately, the letters did not stop corporations from dealing with China but they and other protests helped draw attention to the situation in Darfur - and the Chinese connection to it - prior to the Olympics.

"This year we wanted to continue our focus on Sudan but make it bigger," D'Amboise said.

November's Darfur Day was about educating the Rowan community to the ongoing atrocities and, through education, to elicit change.

Dr. Abdel Gabar Adam and Garelnabi Abusikin, speaking about their experiences

The event featured informational kiosks around the Student Center pit and speeches by two Darfuri émigrés, Dr. Abdel Gabar Adam and Garelnabi Abusikin, both of whom now live in the Philadelphia region.

"A lot of people are frustrated because they don't understand why this is happening," said D'Amboise, 21, a senior public relations major from Clifton Park.

She said the clothing drive, which lasts through the end of the semester, will assist Darfuris who were literally driven from their homes with just the clothes on their back.

She said all types of clothing are needed, especially for young children and women.

D'Amboise said Garelnabi, who witnessed the murder of his father, brother and sister by the Janjaweed - a violent militia supported by the Sudanese government - will personally deliver clothes raised by the Rowan community when he returns to Sudan in 2009.

"This is not a happy story but it deserves attention," D'Amboise said. "It certainly is worthwhile."

Rowan's PRSSA chapter, founded in 1976, has been named Outstanding Chapter in the nation an unprecedented eight times and was the 2008 recipient of the Plank Center Leadership in Public Relations Ethics Award from the University of Alabama.

How to contribute: Students, faculty and staff may contribute to the PRSSA clothing drive by donating articles at drop boxes in the Student Center and the PRSSA office in Bozorth Hall.