By The Editors

The atmosphere of the campus for this past week has been very exciting. It is exciting because on the one hand the passionate push for genocide awareness is exactly what is needed, and on the other hand because it doesn’t seem to be happening anywhere else in America right now. The headlines are crowded with Jackson trial testimony, papal reminiscence and political fallout from the Schiavo incident.

But on this campus, we’re talking about genocide. When we talk about genocide, we realize exactly how stupid it is that we pay attention to Michael Jackson’s trial when we don’t get a vote in the verdict. We remember what the pope would want us to do with our time. Even issues that really matter to us, like same-sex marriage and abortion, seem like they can wait because if we could have helped Paul Rusesabagina even on the last day it would have alleviated some of the shame he invokes.

The trick is getting us to talk about it. It is both a blessing and a curse that genocide is a nonpartisan issue. It’s hard to get people to talk about it because we can’t argue with one another about it. We just agree, so we assume it will get taken care of and we go back to fighting. Fighting is more fun than agreeing, so fights sell newspapers.

Mr. Rusesabagina spoke about America’s lack of attention to Africa in general, other than South Africa, and surely the problems in all of Africa warrant huge demonstrations to persuade our leaders that a policy change is necessary. Students should have been roused to such action by internalizing the issues raised this week. We should all look forward to what these future leaders say and do.

Others will want to do something but will not feel able to make the necessary sacrifices. For them, lesser participation in raising awareness of the cause against genocide can take as little as ten minutes a week. When you write a letter to a congressman, senator or the president, the official doesn’t read it himself. The letter is read by an intern in his office who notes your issue and your stance on it and puts your letter in a pile of other letters with the same stance. Once that pile becomes large, things may start to happen. Many predict that a few more letters would have incited the U.S. government to act in Rwanda. Because of this quantitative tally, while you can write your own letter, you could also find the website of an organization that supports your cause (such as savedarfur.org in the case of the current genocide in Darfur, Sudan), download the sample letter to an official that such sites usually have, attach your information to it, and send it.

Everyone agrees that genocide is bad. Stopping it is urgent and activism is possible. There is no excuse for letting something like Rwanda happen again.