Students write letters about Darfur

Student group hopes letters will push McCaskill to act.

By Jess Camp

Published March 2, 2007

Since 2003, the Sudanese government has been fighting against two rebel groups in the Darfur region who want underdevelopment in the country addressed. To subdue those groups, the government's armies are killing and chasing out those who support the rebels. The Bush Administration has declared that what the government is doing to its people is wrong and is called genocide.

Students at MU and across the country have come together to take a stand against this. A student group, called STAND, which stands for Students Taking Action Now: Darfur, is trying stop the genocide with a letter-writing campaign.

STAND organized a day of letter writing in Brady Commons Tuesday to help spark the attention of Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.

STAND Founder and President Julie VanMater said this event would help get other people on campus interested in fighting for this cause. She said she wants people to know about STAND and to know that it is easy to get involved.

"There are practical things that you can do to help this issue, even though it is far, far away," she said.

College Democrats President Mark Buhrmester said he is horrified by the lack of help available for the victims in Darfur.

"I participated because I believe that genocide is an atrocity in all places and times," he said. "The United States needs to take a firm stance against the genocide in Darfur."

Buhrmester said he wrote his letter from the angle of his leadership position.

"I only had a couple minutes to write mine because I was already late for class, so I just wrote that as the President of the Mizzou College Democrats, I urge Senator McCaskill to make the genocide in Darfur an important issue in the Senate," Buhrmester said.

Sophomore Daniel Dorsey, who helped organize the event, wrote two letters. He said that he congratulated McCaskill for making it into Congress and hoped that she would use her influence to push for Darfur aid in Congress.

The idea of this letter-writing event was to make McCaskill take a stand on the Darfur issue because she has kept her opinions silent, Dorsey said.

"You can't do much for Darfur without political awareness," said junior Dennis Blust, a member of the Darfur activist group 400,000 Faces who participated in the letter writing.

VanMater said 60 letters were written and they will be hand-delivered to McCaskill in Jefferson City some time soon.

Dorsey said he is optimistic about the effect the letters will have.

"The more letters we write the better," Dorsey said. "She'll have to respond eventually."

Buhrmester said he thinks the letters will have a positive effect.

"Senator McCaskill is sensible, and I believe understands the terrible nature of the Darfur genocide and knows that America cannot stand by while it continues," he said.

After the Holocaust, Dorsey said he knows that the U.S. government said genocide would never happen again, but it did in Rwanda and Kosovo.

"It's about time that we make 'never again' a reality," he said.