Lax case arouses campus activism

As the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense prepares to chant down Duke today, the University again confronts the cavalcade of protest that has besieged campus in the five weeks since rape allegations surfaced against members of the men's lacrosse team.

But today, students are also returning from "Stop Genocide" Darfur rallies in Washington, D.C., and heading off to immigration rights boycotts, capping off a semester full of campus activism.

The combination of outrage and outreach has left a number of prominent campus activists searching for ways to connect Duke students with humanitarian causes by building on recent grassroots success while harnessing the responses to immediate controversies.

"Certainly events like the lacrosse incident do cause a broader range of people to engage because it's close to home, but I don't think that's a necessary element for good activism," said Robin Kirk, coordinator for the Duke Human Rights Initiative. "I know a number of students who have spent time on things like Darfur, immigration, Tibet and Nepal and have used the personal stories of the people involved to make it really come home.

"That's the key to activism: making these seemingly faraway situations come close to home," she said.

Automatic Activators

Duke's activist volume has increased during the past few years in response to large-scale, controversial events-from the Latino community's demands following a fraternity theme party in 2003 to an uproar of debate when the University hosted the Palestine Solidarity Movement's annual conference in October 2004.

"I think campuses are, and always have been, centers of activism, and things pop up which create it," said Rann Bar-on, a third-year graduate student in mathematics who helped bring the PSM to campus. "Until this year-this semester actually-I was kind of unhappy with the way things were going. It was a little on the quiet side."

Perhaps the most tenuous balance came when Sexual Assault Awareness Week fell on the University at the same time as the national media.

Women's Center Director Donna Lisker said a flood of female students sought counseling during the week but added that her staff worked to prevent the scheduled Take Back the Night march from becoming "another lacrosse rally."

"I don't think the message has changed at all," Lisker said. "It may be easier for us to get an audience, but that's not going to change the way we approach things."

Junior Daniel Bowes, president of the University's chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, however, acknowledged that fighting the single issue of an underage drinking sting last fall took attention away from issues like gay marriage and the Supreme Court.

"We just haven't had the kind of interest that you'd hope a thriving academic community would have on these types of issues," he said. "People are busy here."

Grassroots Groundbreaking

When it comes to everyday-and often international-human rights issues from genocide to worker's rights, Duke's activist groups are often left with few options aside from distributing flyers outside the West Union Building.

"Once the story dies down and it isn't making headlines anymore, that's when the real work starts," said Dawn Peebles, a first-year graduate student in cultural anthropology and leader of the Human Rights Initiative's spring conference on Nepal.

Most people in the University's activist community agreed that this year's most effective application of a larger human rights cause to the University was the "sweat-free campaign"-Students Against Sweatshops' successful negotiation with administrators to ensure a living wage for manufacturers of Duke-logo apparel.

After obtaining nearly 500 students' signatures for President Richard Brodhead on both a card and an oversized T-shirt-a visual tool for activism not unlike the Sexual Assault Week clothesline-the group convinced the University in February to continue its leadership in the anti-sweatshop movement.

"You kind of need the hardcore people who are doing the organizing and people around who are willing to sign something," said Bar-on, who is also a member of SAS. "It doesn't require the entire University to demand something to get things moving."

Indeed, smaller student organizations have effected serious change of late, from the Sudan Coalition and other groups making the University a leader in fundraising and awareness for genocide in Darfur, to Duke Organizing helping, this semester, to save the job of one fired housekeeper but lose a similar fight for another.

After all the flyering, signing and protesting, the University's disparate activist groups still find it difficult to make progress because "we're not a very activist campus," said senior Alex Oliveira, president of the Global Health Forum. "One thing that we have not used to our advantage is a philosophy about how to mobilize students, people and communities."

Studies of student activism have shown that healthy activist subcultures extend protests from one issue to multiple causes-a finding supported at Duke by Brodhead's acknowledgement that the lacrosse case "has brought to glaring visibility underlying issues."

To that end, leaders of several Duke activist organizations have emphasized the importance of establishing unity and institutional knowledge across groups before allowing campus sentiment to focus solely on the rape debate.

"Alliances between groups are extremely powerful," Bar-on said, noting the success of events on sensitive topics that have been sponsored by many groups. "I think there have been some opportunities squandered throughout the lacrosse stuff. I think we've certainly squandered the opportunity to integrate the whole community."

Many other behind-the-scenes activists, meanwhile, emphasize looking beyond Duke's walls.

"There's been a lot of the kinds of speak-outs [against the lacrosse team] and rallies and panels and all that marching on the house-all that I think has been very positive," Kirk said. "Still, there are students doing other, more global things that are much more powerful and impactful than any one scandal involving Duke students."