Student group Mighty Mic commenced its highly publicized Genocide Awareness Week on Monday, with events planned to help educate the campus about the targeted mass killings of people around the world. Film screenings, speakers, dance performances and letter writing will occur all week leading up to the Human Rights Awareness Concert on May 29 that will raise money for victims of genocide.
Mighty Mic is not the sole campus group that has organized campus events devoted to raising money and spreading awareness about social justice issues. UCLA’s Dance Marathon committee works diligently to raise money for pediatric AIDS, and the Social Activist Project has ongoing events throughout the year. Though events like these garner local support and wide participation, many UCLA students remain aloof from the issues these events address or become jaded by the trendy ways these campaigns are promoted.
“I see the protests and I’ve heard about a couple of the things that happen on campus, but I haven’t looked at it in depth,” said Eric Kveton, a first-year math and applied science student.
Students are lucky to find an abundance of free campus events and opportunities to learn more about social justice issues. UCLA, especially, has a history rich with campus groups supporting a large spectrum of issues. Though the plethora of these opportunities may be overwhelming, that is not an excuse to drone out fellow Bruins fliering with your iPod or to dispose of a flyer without even glancing at it.
Though Dance Marathon’s highlighter-colored shirts may be obnoxious and the Mighty Mic posters strewn across campus can cloud your vision, these are all sincere efforts by fellow students to grab the apathetic student’s attention.
These student groups intentionally plan interactive and exciting events that provide an education starkly different than that we receive in lecture halls. Participating in these entertaining events is a start, but recognizing the issues they promote is key to broadening our knowledge and interaction of the world outside UCLA. The Human Rights Awareness Concert’s crowd-pleasing acts include OK Go and Zion I, but there are also speakers and videos planned. These elements are present to help students understand that genocide is, as director Azadeh Ghafari describes it, an “issue that is not just about race or religion but something deeper that also touches on environmental and ethnic factors.”
At UCLA, we have the opportunity to learn more than just differential equations, Keynesian economics and Freudian psychology; we can more deeply understand the world we live in where social rights issues are at the forefront of global problems. UCLA students know these issues exist, but school work and other commitments can distract or keep them from putting in the effort to understand their complexity and take action.
“Interest in social justice issues is definitely one of the things students lack; they are so concentrated on school they forget what’s going on outside of school, especially if they are not in organizations,” said Amy Rivas, a second-year sociology student.
Unfortunately, the value of world social issues can be lost even to students who support them because of the trendy, frivolous ways they are demonstrated. I’ve seen the shirts around campus declare opposition to genocide in Darfur, but do the students who sport these activist Ts understand the problems they profess to challenge?
T-shirts and flashy concerts can appear demeaning to the tragedy of the issue they promote, so to solve this reduction of the issue at hand, students should tap into the information available to them on these issues and seek the education campus events can provide.
It is easy to become immune to human rights activists as they invade Bruin Walk with hip posters and cheesy T-shirts, but these efforts are only implemented in attempting to solicit attention for their cause.
Instead of brushing off activist groups, we should take advantage of the events they support and become more educated. Then, rather than scoffing at the seemingly simplistic way activism is portrayed or remaining apathetic despite repeated awareness campaigns, the general student body can decide what it wants to do to become informed about global concerns before graduation.
Beyond the concerts, the dancing, the speakers and the films, students have the chance to become informed about human rights issues. We should take advantage of the fun events these groups on campus put on and learn more about the problems they address.
Ready to trash your “save Darfur” T-shirt and get educated to take action? E-mail Mier at smier@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.