News and Events
Change Of Hearts
By Chris Guy
Sometimes it's easy to forget the atrocities that happen every day beyond the leafy confines of campus. Through a new course on human rights and social justice, students bring humanitarian issues to light.
It was the students who inspired Professor Christine Wade to develop a course to focus on some of the horrors of our time. "Every year," she says, "students in my classes would write about human rights, and we hadn't added it to the curriculum."
The young political science and international studies majors wanted a semester to turn their clear-eyed gaze on human rights issues and social injustices affecting people around the globe: poverty and hunger, human trafficking, access to health care, torture, violence against women, and workers' rights and fair trade, among them.
"We've always touched on issues of human rights in our classes, but never had an entire course devoted to the topic," says Carin Janet '09, a political science major who worked with three other students in Wade's class to bring attention to the global hunger crisis.
During the daylong "WAC Fast 2009" in April, during which members of the campus community donated the money they would have otherwise spent on food, Janet and her teammates raised more than $1,200 for Heifer International—three times their goal. Heifer projects around the world help families achieve self-reliance through the gift of livestock and training.
"WAC Fast" campaign leader Alisha George '10 says the money they raised is enough for Heifer International to buy two cows, one goat, assorted trees and colonies of honeybees to help families sustain themselves. "Got Food?" t-shirts donated by the College's Louis L. Goldstein '35 Program in Public Affairs carried the message that 923 million people in the world go hungry every day and encouraged participants to do something about it.
The hunger project was one of four public awareness campaigns devised by Wade's 16-member class as part of their coursework. "Change for Change" provided books for a high school in South Africa. The "Sleep-out for Solidarity" team staged a community sleep-out to call attention to child soldiers and those "night commuters" avoiding kidnap in northern Uganda. The "Greatest Silence" campaign offered an unblinking look at the ways in which women suffer in war, particularly through sexual terrorism.
Wade's students took a very democratic approach to their project assignment. Each student was required to deliver a three-minute campaign pitch to fellow students. The class voted on the most compelling topics, so they effectively chose part of the curriculum, notes Wade.
By challenging them to develop brief media spots and to stage campus events focused on their selected human rights topics, Wade encouraged her students to take a hands-on approach.
"We live in a society of incredible privilege and, because of that, I knew this had to be a class about doing—not just research, not all discussion," Wade says. In a class of overachievers—four of Wade's students were inducted into the College's chapter of Phi Beta Kappa Society—the students took their assignments seriously, mounting public awareness campaigns that directed local audiences to global organizations such as Heifer International and Women for Women International.
Two groups screened documentary films that have been shown to audiences around the world to increase awareness of the crisis of child soldiers in Uganda (Invisible Children) and the mass rapes in the Democratic Republic of Congo (The Greatest Silence).
Students in the "Change for Change" drive spent a week set up in the College dining hall and at various campus events, collecting spare change for book donations to benefit Nyaluza High School in Grahamstown, South Africa. One of Wade's students, international studies major Kevin Rodriguez '10, had previously volunteered at the school during his semester abroad at Rhodes University.
"We wanted to personalize our project by supporting a school where Washington College has a relationship," notes Tim Danos '10, a member of the "Change for Change" team. "Kevin knows the headmaster there."
During the week of April 19, the group raised $200—enough to buy and ship 50 books.
"Whenever people donated money we asked them to suggest titles of books they love," says Danos. "We're sending a lot of classics."
For Danos, a political science major intent on a teaching career, the idea of supporting education half a world away was compelling. "All of these socio-economic issues we talked about in class affect education," he says. "People who are distracted by hunger can't learn. If the schools are too distant, if people can't afford books, they can't learn. Two hundred dollars doesn't sound like much, but it can have a huge impact in one classroom in South Africa."
He and his classmates agree that the first step to address problems of social injustice is to talk about them. For Kate Towson '09, who volunteered at an AIDS clinic in Grahamstown during her semester at Rhodes University, women's issues are paramount. In addition to leading "The Greatest Silence" campaign in Wade's class, she wrote her senior thesis on women in war.
"Wide-scale atrocities are being committed against women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but it's not mentioned in the media," says Towson. "One million women have been raped during 15 years of war —and that's a conservative estimate," she says. "We wanted people to understand the scale of it."
After showing the heart-wrenching documentary to a full house in Litrenta Lecture Hall, Towson and her "Greatest Silence" teammates passed out information about divesting in corporations operating in the Congo and Sudan, where brutalities against women are rampant, and also raised money for Women for Women International, a non-governmental organization helping women set up small businesses.
"Even human rights organizations are at odds sometimes. It's hard to know what the best solution is."
Two weeks later, Wade arrived at Norman James Theatre, joining a group of students gathered to watch Invisible Children, and then to spend the night on the hard wooden floor. A rain-beaten spring in Chestertown has forced organizers to abandon plans for a sleep-out on the campus lawn.
The 2003 film created by three young California men, amateur filmmakers, tells the vicious truth of young boys who must leave their homes and hide each night to avoid being kidnapped and forced into guerrilla militias in northern Uganda, where they are ordered to commit atrocities—often against their own families or friends.
Maureen Sentman '10 says that the objective of the sleep-out was to demonstrate the similarities between young people from different continents.
"We wanted to get people to care about these kids who just want to feel safe and protected. That's a universal desire. It's very strange, because I expected a different worldview, but we learned that these children have the same ambitions that we do: to go to college, to have careers as doctors or lawyers. With this project, we wanted to show that people halfway around the world aren't that different from us, but they are plagued by these incredible hindrances."
A political science major, Sentman says she had little interest in international affairs until she was introduced to comparative studies. "I'm now completely focused on the international stage." Under Wade's guidance, Sentman is writing her senior thesis on environmental policy in Latin America.
Alisha George has taken several classes with Christine Wade—World Politics, Revolution, Violence and Terrorism, Comparative Peace Processes, and now Human Rights and Social Justice—and has signed up for Wade's fall class on Government and Politics in Latin America.
"Dr. Wade is very disciplined and expects a lot from her students," says George, who has chosen "child soldiers" as the subject of her senior thesis. "I've never gotten an A in her class, but I've worked hard to earn every B."
This semester's class was particularly fascinating, George says, because of the dynamics between students and professor. "We all have different personalities and different opinions, and Dr. Wade would play devil's advocate. She tries to steer us toward literature that suggests solutions, because policy needs to connect to real people. Even human rights organizations are at odds sometimes. It's hard to know what the best solution is."
"teaching peace is hard . . ."
Wade demonstrates just how difficult peacebuilding is in her course, Comparative Peace Processes, which she would like to offer as a companion course to Human Rights & Social Justice. In Peace Processes, students explore the roots of conflict, theories of peace, methods of peacebuilding, reconciliation and international cooperation. The course—the only peace course offered at Washington College—focuses on contemporary conflicts and peacebuilding efforts that took place in Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Cambodia, El Salvador and Guatemala.
"Teaching peace is hard," Wade says, "because people relate more easily with the idea of revolution and the romantic notion that you would give your life for a just cause. Revolution is sexy. Peace isn't sexy. That's part of the reason we don't study it much."
Wade has her students play the part of peacemakers, simulating the peace process by adopting the personas of the real-life characters involved. She's found it to be an effective approach to teaching global conflict resolution.
"For most of these students, we're asking them to envision places they've never been and circumstances they can hardly imagine," says Wade. "Most can't imagine what a conflict society or a post-conflict society looks like. It's beyond their realm of experience. So we have to do something else to engage them in active learning."
Wade is well versed in the politics of conflict and peace-building in Latin America. She is the co-author of Understanding Central America: Global Forces, Rebellion and Change (Westview Press, 2005) which addresses the role of domestic and global political and economic forces in shaping rebellion and regime change in the region. Her co-authored book A Revolução Salvadorenha (The Salvadoran Revolution) is part of the Revolutions of the Twentieth Century Collection at São Paulo: Fundação Editora Da UNESP (2006). She is working on a manuscript on post-war politics in El Salvador, as well as articles on the Salvadoran left and the politics of gang violence in Central America.
Wade first became interested in El Salvador as an undergraduate at Agnes Scott College. "El Salvador was the center of the universe during the Cold War," she says. "During the early 1990s, when I started studying politics, it was huge. The wars were ending and peace processes were starting. I was able to study the end of war and the beginning of peace. That's what got me hooked."
At the time, El Salvador was an ideal case study for political scientists, she says. "If you could rebuild a society, how would you do it and what would it look like? And what would you do to ensure the longevity of peace?"
While prospects for peace in El Salvador were promising, the realities are less than perfect. Wade has been watching carefully. She served as an electoral observer for the 2000 municipal elections, and returned for research projects in 2004 and 2006. Most recently, Wade spent her spring break in El Salvador, keeping tabs on a landmark election that cleared the way for that nation's first leftist government. She brings that real-world experience to the classroom.
Tahir Shad, who directs the College's international studies program, calls Wade "one of the best teachers in the department, a creative teacher. We were looking for a specialist in Latin America who could really inspire our students, and we were thrilled to hire her," Shad says. "With this new course, she found a way to get students directly involved with projects that they made come to life right here on campus."
Her students say Wade is among the most accessible and open professors on campus. She won more points when she followed through on promises to take part in the 12-hour campus fast and to join the overnight sleep-out for solidarity.
"I always expected to be huddling with my students, talking shop about Latin American politics," she says, "but frequently, we're talking about their life goals and direction."
"We always talk about how huge these problems are and how few we are," says Danos. "Doing small things can have an effect. Dr. Wade has taught us that. She recognizes the talents we all have, and she expects us to use them."
As the semester drew to a close, Wade braced herself to say good-bye, to send her seniors off into the world. She admires what they have accomplished and she respects them as individuals. What does she want for them?
"I hope they find whatever it is that makes them happy, and that it can sustain them. Having a happy, productive life is a pretty amazing thing," she says. "I'd also like them to believe they can do whatever they want to do. That they don't believe people who say it's too hard. That they become as determined as I am."
"This is my last class as an undergraduate," says Towson who, a week after graduation, was headed for Tanzania as a program assistant for the College's summer seminar there. "Dr. Wade has motivated me in ways that I can't even describe. I feel that all of us in this class have become better people."
Chris Guy is a veteran Eastern Shore correspondent with the Baltimore Sun. He recently covered the story of the role of Mexican laborers in the Maryland seafood industry.
See It Online
To view the students' media campaign ads and Maureen Sentman's video recap of the Human Rights & Social Justice class projects, visit Washington College's YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/washingtoncollege