While other major university campuses play host to student rallies against violence in Sudan, College Green has seen no such protests.
Although the cause has generated some interest among Penn students, STAND -- Students Taking Action Now: Darfur, a national collegiate effort to protest the Sudanese situation -- has not yet gained steam on Penn's campus, STAND coordinator and Engineering junior Anna Mayergoyz said.
STAND encourages college students across the country to push their institutions to divest interests from companies involved with the Sudanese government. The government-supported, predominantly Arab Janjaweed militia is engaged in an ongoing conflict with the non-Arab peoples living in and around Darfur, a region in the west of the country.
The United Nations estimates that 180,000 Sudanese have died so far in what many term a genocide, calling Darfur "the worst human rights situation in the world today."
Harvard and Stanford universities have already divested from PetroChina, an oil company with connections to the Sudanese government.
Yale sophomore and STAND co-coordinator Eric Bloom said that his group, which held a rally last Thursday on the New Haven campus, collected 1,500 signatures in support of divestment.
Bloom added that STAND is making the case that "investment in companies [with connections to Darfur] perpetuates genocide."
"STAND has been one of the most active groups on campus," Bloom said.
At Penn, there are no rallies or large-scale petition-signings. But Mayergoyz and Engineering sophomore George Sworo, a Sudanese native whose family fled the region when he was 3, are working to increase awareness and activism.
Sworo said it is difficult to encourage divestment because the University does not publicly disclose its holdings.
STAND members are also attempting to arrange a meeting President Amy Gutmann to discuss any Penn investments in Sudan.
"Hopefully, we will be able to meet with [Gutmann] if she is actually passionate about it," Sworo said.
Mayergoyz said her group organized about 20 events last year, but the organizations' efforts have fallen off somewhat because "people who are interested in [the Darfur movement] tend to be interested in other causes as well."
Last year, the group met with staff members from the Greenfield Intercultural Center, but Mayergoyz said that the meeting was "useless" because the Center could not help encourage divestment without access to Penn's investment information.
Mayergoyz added that Penn's STAND chapter also hopes to focus on national campaigns like A Million Voices for Darfur, which aims to send 1 million postcards to President Bush expressing concern about the situation in Sudan.
