2008 Woodie Awards
New student group raises awareness of Darfur, genocide
Erin Semagin Damio
Issue date: 4/11/07 Section: News
Two years ago, Sunish Oturkar hardly knew anything about the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. Today, Oturkar has founded a student activist group opposing the genocide, and is working to get 10,000 signatures on a petition to help ease the situation.
Oturkar, a middler engineering major, remembers when he first heard about the situation in Darfur. He was at a concert and the band was passing around a petition to end the genocide.
"I was talking to their tour manager and she was telling me about Darfur," Oturkar said. "And my eyes were just wide open because I couldn't believe something like a genocide could be happening in our day and age. I was just in shock by it; I didn't know what to do."
Earlier this year, a national Student Anti-Genocide Coalition called STAND had its annual conference at Harvard University. The conference was free to the public, and Oturkar spent most of the three days involved.
"Everyone there were all these activists that were already involved, already motivated," Oturkar said. "So you got swept into the wave of motivation, and you left the conference with this feeling that your main priority should be to help save these people in Darfur, no matter how you did it. I can't even describe it, I've never had that feeling before. You felt so compelled to do something."
Oturkar realized Northeastern was one of the only colleges in Boston without a group dedicated to Darfur. He began a campus branch of the national STAND organization, and NUSTAND was officially recognized as a student group in mid-February.
Oturkar said NUSTAND has three objectives: to educate students, to push the university community to divest and to participate in broader STAND events.
Raising awareness is one of the most important focuses, Oturkar said.
"A lot of people don't know what's actually happening," Oturkar said. "A lot of times I'll wear a shirt that says, 'Save Darfur' and the biggest question I get is 'Who's Darfur?'"
Oturkar, a middler engineering major, remembers when he first heard about the situation in Darfur. He was at a concert and the band was passing around a petition to end the genocide.
"I was talking to their tour manager and she was telling me about Darfur," Oturkar said. "And my eyes were just wide open because I couldn't believe something like a genocide could be happening in our day and age. I was just in shock by it; I didn't know what to do."
Earlier this year, a national Student Anti-Genocide Coalition called STAND had its annual conference at Harvard University. The conference was free to the public, and Oturkar spent most of the three days involved.
"Everyone there were all these activists that were already involved, already motivated," Oturkar said. "So you got swept into the wave of motivation, and you left the conference with this feeling that your main priority should be to help save these people in Darfur, no matter how you did it. I can't even describe it, I've never had that feeling before. You felt so compelled to do something."
Oturkar realized Northeastern was one of the only colleges in Boston without a group dedicated to Darfur. He began a campus branch of the national STAND organization, and NUSTAND was officially recognized as a student group in mid-February.
Oturkar said NUSTAND has three objectives: to educate students, to push the university community to divest and to participate in broader STAND events.
Raising awareness is one of the most important focuses, Oturkar said.
"A lot of people don't know what's actually happening," Oturkar said. "A lot of times I'll wear a shirt that says, 'Save Darfur' and the biggest question I get is 'Who's Darfur?'"
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