Students raise awareness of genocide in Darfur
RBR, Shore Reg'l student groups advocate for victims
BY DANIEL HOWLEY Staff Writer

Students of Shore Regional High School rallied together Saturday to raise awareness of the ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.

Clockwise from top: Students from Shore Regional High School in West Long Branch participate in the Shorestock 2008 event to raise awareness of the genocide in Darfur. Dominic Valenti of Fresh Greens performs with the band. An RBR student joins classmates at a vigil held in Marine Park in Red Bank in May.

After a year of planning, the high school's Student Council presented the "Shorestock 2008" festival on June 7 on the West Long Branch campus.

"You would be surprised at how many kids in our school don't know about Darfur," Hannah Molitoris, a senior at Shore Regional, said. "I think we are educating a lot of people about it."

The event was the brainchild of Molitoris along with her senior classmates Bri Rubino, Larry Giannechini and Caitlin McGrath.

Students and teachers braved neartriple digit heat to attend the festival, which featured carnival games, a magic show, live music and the school's annual battle of the bands.

PHOTOS BY FRANK GALIPO

Set to graduate on June 19, the students said they began planning the Shorestock festival last year as a way to give back to the student body.

According to Giannechini, the students initially hoped to host the event last June, but were forced to reschedule it for this year due to the challenges of planning such a large event.

"There were a lot of obstacles, but our advisers really pushed for [the festival] and had meetings with the principal," Molitoris explained.

"We went to meetings with the superintendent and we really wanted it," Molitoris said, adding, "We didn't care, we wanted to do something."

Tickets for the event cost $10 and all proceeds are going to Aid Darfur, a United Nations-sponsored agency that works to help alleviate the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the region.

Another participating group in "Shorestock" was the Red Bank Regional (RBR) High School chapter of STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition.

RBR STAND President Meaghan Collins, a junior, said previously that the group would be participating in the event, which aimed to help the international effort to educate and assist those suffering in Darfur.

Collins, who is also the Mid-Atlantic outreach coordinator for STAND, an international organization which empowers world youth to work against genocide, and RBR STAND have done their own work to publicize the atrocities that are occurring in western region of Sudan, called Darfur.

RBR STAND held a candlelight vigil in Marine Park on May 21 for the victims of Darfurian genocide.

The candlelight vigil was part of the group's Genocide Awareness Week, which included bake sales, a sidewalk chalk event and information distribution.

For more information on the RBR STAND club, go to the Web site RBRSTAND.org.

Chris Schuster, co-adviser for the student council and an English teacher at Shore Regional, said the event was a result of the students' hard work.

"It's difficult to put an event this big together because there are so many facets that go into it," Schuster said.

FRANK GALIPO Kelly Cosentino, 15, of Oceanport, puts the finishing touches on a sign promoting her band Afternoon Breakfast prior to performing at the Shore Regional High School Shorestock festival in West Long Branch on June 7.

"The amount of organization it takes and the advisers needed to do it, it's a lot of work," Schuster added.

When the students learned about the genocide in Darfur in one of their history classes, they decided to take action at a local level, Schuster explained.

"We have a requirement here at Shore Regional called 'Conscience,' " Shuster said. "The state of New Jersey only requires two or three years of history.

"We require four, and one of the courses we require is Conscience," Schuster added.

The Conscience class covers topics ranging from prejudice and intolerance to war crimes and genocide in order to help students develop an appreciation for and understanding of the world's various cultures, according to Schuster.

"It teaches students about the genocides going on in the world now and in the past, and it really changes a lot of kids when they learn about them," Schuster said. "These students know about Darfur because of this class."

McGrath explained that the idea for the festival came after the students took the class.

"At first we didn't know what Darfur was," McGrath said. "But once we learned about it, kids were hanging posters around the school and trying to sell ribbons to raise money for it.

"Everybody got really into it once they learned about it, so we thought this would be a great way to get the school really involved," McGrath said.

Molitoris said that after she learned about Darfur, she wanted to do something that would make an impact and draw awareness to the genocide.

"Last year we were talking about doing something," Molitoris explained. "We thought about different fundraisers and came up with Darfur."

The genocide in Darfur is the result of an ongoing conflict between warring tribal and religious factions.

The conflict in Darfur began in February 2003, when frustrated by poverty and neglect from the Sudanese government, two Darfurian rebel groups, the Sudanese Liberation Army Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement, rebelled against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

Students across the nation have formed STAND, a student-run anti-genocide group seeking to raise awareness of the situation in Darfur.

The situation in Darfur is explained on the STAND Web site.

"Claiming to be putting down the insurrection, the government responded with a scorched-earth campaign against the innocent civilians of Darfur, enlisting the Janjaweed, a militia drawn from members of Arab tribes in the region, to perpetrate the attacks," according to the Web site.

It continues, "Since 2003, the government-sponsored Janjaweed have used rape, displacement, organized starvation, threats against aid workers, and mass murder to perpetrate genocide."

To date, the violence in Darfur has claimed an estimated 400,000 lives and displaced more than 2.5 million people.