PorColombia Protests Terrorism The Ticker 02/11/08

Millions of Colombians marched worldwide on Thursday, Feb. 4 showing their disapproval against the guerrilla group FARC and their terrorist tactics. The group is known for kidnapping, extortion, drug trafficking and coercion used to finance arms and their four decades of conflict with the government and paramilitary groups.

Among those millions, Baruch College’s club PorColombia joined in on the march in New York City. The organization, whose acronym translates to Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, is a Marxist-Leninist group, although it is considered a terrorist group by more than 30 countries. The demonstration is considered the largest civil display against FARC in Colombia’s history.

Messages of support were heard from five continents and cities like New York, London, Madrid and Tokyo held marches. Thanks to social networking, Colombians also demonstrated in places as remote as the Kurdistan region in Iraq, the Red Sea in Egypt and the Chilean Patagonia region.

In New York City, the march was held in front of the United Nations building at 42nd Street and First Ave. Early Monday morning, PorColombia members Angie Van Den Berghe, John Moreno and Jeffrey Navarro joined 5,000 others to march for the cause. According to the Baruch website, PorColombia is an organization whose goal is to “provide students with the means and the support to act on personal initiatives and accomplish specific goals focused on Colombia.”

Marchers wore white t-shirts with the slogan “I am Colombia” and “No More Kidnapping! No More Lies! No More Murder! No More FARC!”

“We protested in an orderly fashion, Colombians from the tri-state area attended the rally to send a loud message to the FARC that we’re not going to tolerate their terrorist activities anymore,” added Dr. Claudia Cujar, medical researcher at Columbia University and director of the march.

Organizers used vacation time, sick days, weekends and long nights preparing the demonstration. Supporters even came from Connecticut and Pennsylvania, taking a day off from work. “Colombians showed that we can organize and work together towards a peaceful country,” added Navarro.

Social networking played a vital role; organizers used Facebook to communicate logistics and maintained forums about marketing and promotion ideas. “Un millon de voces contra las FARC” (A million voices against FARC) grew to 277,000 members in less than two months.

“Facebook was an invaluable tool for us to coordinate all aspects of the march, but none of these [would] be possible without the tenacity and compromise from Angie, John and Jeffrey from Baruch College,” says Cujar. “They worked with fortitude and charisma, they care about hostages and their long captivity, their families and the future of Colombia,” he says.

Besides Facebook, the group printed 25,000 posters and 50,000 postcards that were distributed in restaurants, parks and in front of churches. A party bus was also rented to go around nightclubs and spread the word, according to Luz Carreño, the logistics coordinator of the march.

But criticism was drawn from some victim’s families who disapproved of the march because of fear of retaliation from their captors. Some opposition members and scholars argued that the message of the protest was too narrow. In an article published by opendemocracy.org, journalist Catalina Holguín argues that the simplicity of the march’s message presents a distorted view of the complexity of the Colombian armed conflict.

The FARC, government, drug traffickers and right-wing paramilitary group AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia) have been key players in the Colombian conflict for the last four decades. It has spilled over its borders, provoking tensions with Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has improved the internal security situation that keeps his approval ratings above 80 percent, according to independent polls. But he has failed so far to disarm the FARC or to reach a peace accord that guarantees the safe release of all the hostages.

Here in NYC, the march’s organizers are evaluating their experience using feedback coming in via Facebook. ” We didn’t feel comfortable to sit there and do nothing when hostages have nothing but hope,” said Navarro.

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Rodents Invade Baruch The Ticker 12/04/06

Lunch time at Baruch means pizza on the third floor where all the club and student association offices are located. It also means hundreds of students getting their lunch from the cafeteria or nearby food carts and using the front of the building at 25th Street as an improvised dining room. Faculty and administrative staff order food almost everyday or sometimes they bring their own.

In recent weeks, weather changes and the increasing amount of garbage and food leftovers produced by the students and faculty alike are increasing the amount of rodent reports around campus. Every time a report is received at the Department of Building and Grounds…

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Suicide on the Rise among College Students The Ticker 4/18/05

Suicidal tendencies among college students are increasing, according to a new study published in the journal of the American Association of Suicidology. Results show that from a sample of 1,865 students interviewed at four major universities, five percent had attempted suicide while in college.

Several universities and colleges around the nation are beefing up their counseling services to manage the rising numbers of students suffering with…

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Waldron, Students Lobby for Support The Ticker 4/18/05

In mid-March, President Kathleen Waldron, Brian Kell, executive director of government and community relations, and three Baruch students traveled to Albany to meet with elected officials and support a massive campaign against the proposed cuts in financial aid programs, an imminent tuition increase and the shortfall in operating funds for CUNY. At the city level, the New York City budget for CUNY has proposals…

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Campus Diversity on the Rise in U.S. The Ticker 2/28/05

African-American, Hispanic, Asian-American and American Indian students have boosted college enrollment more than 50 percent in the last 10 years, according to the “Minorities in Higher Education Twenty-first Annual Status Report,” released last Monday by the American Council on Education.

The report found that between 1991 and 2001, the college enrollment for minorities rose by nearly 1.5 million to more than 4.3 million students.The annual report is widely recognized as the national source of information on current trends made by minority students and is funded by grants from the Coca-Cola Foundation and the GE Foundation. “Although the number of minority students pursuing higher education degrees has risen over the years, this report shows that much work lies ahead to narrow the large gap that still remains,” said GE Foundation President Bob Corcoran.

Even with the significant increase, minorities were not enrolled at the same rate as white students. Forty percent of African-Americans and 34 percent of Hispanics attended college, compared with 45 percent of whites.“Diversifying the nation’s higher education institutions continues to be one of the most important challenges facing our society,” stated ACE President David Ward in a press release.

A new group included in the annual report represents college students whose race/ethnicity is unknown. When colleges ask applicants about their ethnic background, the form always states that the question is voluntary and that the information will be kept confidential. So why are many students choosing not to check a box? The ACE researchers said they do not know exactly why in 2001 more than 938,000 students declined to identify their race.

Some admissions officers speculate that because of Affirmative Action, maybe some white students think they stand a better chance of acceptance by not marking “White” on their application. Or some Latino students may not feel comfortable when asked about their ethnicity, believing that being Latino is enough. Other theories suggested that some minority students are fearful that common stereotypes may hurt their chances of admission.“Race is an artificial barrier created in America…based in the ‘fear of change’ of conservative right-wing organizations,” stated Arthur Banton, a Graduate History Major at City College. Banton acted as moderator to a follow-up discussion of the first film in a series called “Does Race Matter?” held last Tuesday at the Vertical Campus.

Baruch is a clear example of the shift of college demographics in the last 10 years. For the sixth consecutive year, it has been named the most ethnically diverse institution of higher education in the US by the U.S. News & World Report (2005).During February, the USG is promoting a month-long event called “Celebrate Diversity” – a series of film presentations, discussion panels, dance performances and museum tours intended “to broaden our cultural understanding and bring the Baruch community closer together,” said a brochure distributed by the USG.

However, the increasing trend of students rejecting the idea of race altogether, raises the question whether it should really matter at the time of a college application, a job interview or even inside our college social networks.

Read the article as originally published at Baruch’s The Ticker.