Days after thousands of monks marched on city streets thousands of miles away, a group of students organized their own solidarity protests on campus.
The vigil, which took place on College Green Friday, was held in reaction to the current events in Burma, which has seen a series of monk-led anti-government protests. Burma's military regime has reacted harshly, and news agencies report deaths and hundreds of arrests.
At Penn, students signed protests and folded paper cranes in the spirit of the Japanese tradition that folding 1,000 cranes will make a wish come true. Meanwhile, a Penn graduate and a Drexel graduate, both of whom are Burmese, shared their experiences of life at home.
The two students were granted anonymity because they feared the government would blacklist them from reentering the country if they disclosed their names and because they are scared for friends and family still in Burma.
The vigil is "a very good thing to do. We need to do everything we can," the Penn graduate said.
He said he had attended the Rangoon Institute of Technology in Burma until the school was closed twice for anti-government protests in which he participated. His former school is now being used as a prison for protestors, he said.
"One thing I can guarantee is [that] these [protests] will go on for a while," he said.
The Drexel graduate at the vigil said he came to Drexel because the ruling regime in Burma had "degraded" the education system there.
"I want to go back and do something for the people, but I can't do anything with the military regime [in power] there," he said.
The vigil was organized by a new group on campus, Penn Awake: Citizens of the Global Community.
The group, which received official recognition from the Office of Student Life on Wednesday, was created in response to a perceived lack of political activism on Penn's campus, according to College junior and co-director Kayla Cheatham.
"Part [of the problem] is that the entire activism community is fragmented," Cheatham said.
She added that she hopes the group will help unite different activism groups such as Amnesty International and Democracy Matters and facilitate more protests on campus.
"It's up to the students who are passionate not to say, 'Damn, that's awful' and turn the [newspaper] page," Cheatham said.
There seemed to be a positive reaction to the vigil, with some 60 to 70 signatures in support of the Burmese protests by 2 p.m.
Wharton Ph.D. student Ryan Burg, who attended the vigil, said he was pleased with the event, which he heard about through Facebook.
"This is a start," he said, adding that he hopes Penn students will continue to expand their activism.
