Wiesel inspires Darfur petition

After his speech Wednesday, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel was asked how Princeton students could combat intolerance. The first thing to do, he said, was send a petition to President Bush urging him to stop the genocide in Darfur, Sudan.

Julie Grenet, a graduate student in the French and Italian languages department, was watching a telecast of the speech in a grad student lounge. She decided to act immediately.

"I thought, 'You know what? Let's do this now,' " she said. "Hundreds of people will come flooding out who just heard the same thing we did."

With the help of fellow graduate student Peter Eubanks, she typed a petition, printed and copied it, and ran to greet the audience leaving Wiesel's lecture. "We were just out there screaming," Grenet said. She estimates that they collected 500 signatures in about 30 minutes. Many students took copies of the petition to get more signatures.

Grenet will attend President Tilghman's office hours Monday afternoon to invite her to sign the petition.

Though the petition begins, "We, the students of Princeton University," many members of the broader community attended Wiesel's speech and signed Grenet's petition.

She acknowledged that the wording was not precise.

"The immediacy of the action made for an imperfect petition, but this petition also grew out of a deep humanitarian inspiration," Grenet said. "This enthusiasm was shared and organically spread by those who wanted to help circulate the petition, to get more signatures to participate, to act."

She is considering adding a cover letter to explain that not all signatures are from Princeton students and to clarify the University's level of endorsement.

"It gives my project some definition," said Grenet, who hopes to add Tilghman's signature before sending the petition to the White House.

"After [Wiesel's] speech, I said to my friends, 'My God, I'm more pessimistic than a Buchenwald survivor,' " Grenet said. "I really don't have much hope for humanity, but I said, 'Let's do this.' When you feel despair and powerlessness, doing something makes you feel better."

Wiesel said Wednesday that indifference is the worst possible crime, urging students to teach respect by example and not to be silent in the face of tragedy, offering Darfur as a starting point.

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"I think Darfur is a perfect example of a major tragedy occurring with no one taking any action," said Katrina Rogachevsky '07, co-director of the Princeton Darfur Action Committee (PDAC). "We do a lot of talking about how genocide is a human phenomenon that we all must stand together against, but in a time of need, no one is doing anything."

Other students involved in campus humanitarian organizations have approached Grenet about continuing or expanding the petition campaign.

"It is always important to use whatever voice we have, whether or not it is listened to," Rogachevsky said. "But it is not enough. More needs to be done."

The PDAC organized several events last year, including An Evening for Darfur, which raised money for Oxfam, and Embracing Darfur, a week of fundraising events for the International Rescue Committee.