WASHINGTON-It's 10 p.m. last Thursday night, and a packed bus of energized college students is slowly making its way here for a national rally to call for an immediate end to the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, where an estimated 400,000 have been murdered by the government, which began carrying out a genocide on the ethnic-African population in 2003.The students on the bus come from Brandeis, Harvard, Simmons College and area high schools. The movement they are all committed to, Students Taking Action Now: Darfur, has been called one of the fastest-growing student movements in over a decade, with about 550 chapters established at high schools and universities throughout North America.

"It's gonna rock," Weldon Kennedy '06, the former Brandeis STAND president, said of the rally at about 8 a.m. Friday as the bus arrived here. Brandeis sent about 25 students to the rally. As Brandeis students posed for pictures on their way to the rally, holding signs with phrases such as, "I will not accept genocide in my world," Mark Kaufman '71, who came to the rally with the Jewish Community Relations Council in Boston, said he felt proud to see the "new generation" rallying.

"In 1968, that was us sitting in that photo [protesting the Vietnam War]," he said.

Over 1,000 members of STAND attended a rally here last Sunday on the National Mall, where between 40,000 and 50,000 people gathered to hear forceful speeches from Sudanese refugees, celebrities, politicians, Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious leaders and activists all calling for an end to the genocide in Darfur. The event, one of 20 held around the country, was organized by the Save Darfur Coalition, an umbrella organization of over 160 humanitarian groups, advocating for an end to the genocide.

Before the rally, Massachusetts State Representative Michael Capuano told the Justice it's great to see the student movement pushing the national consciousness. He also credited Massachusetts with leading the nation on the issue. "We in Massachusetts have been pushing for this rally for over a year," he said. "Our voices will be heard."

Speakers included actor George Clooney, holocaust survivor and 1986 Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel, Illinois Senator Barak Obama, the Rev. Al Sharpton, Olympic speedskater Joey Cheek, Def Jam Records founder Russell Simmons and Washington Archbishop Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

Though President Bush called the situation in Darfur a genocide in 2004, approved billions of dollars to send to the region and called for more robust peacekeeping missions to aid the African Union's troops in protecting civilians, speakers and rally participants said the United States needs to do more.

"The facts on the ground remain the same," Obama said. "If we bear witness, then the world will know. If we act, then the world will follow."

Erin Mazursky, a Georgetown University junior, and executive director of national STAND, spoke at the rally.

"Students have stood at the forefront of this movement to stop genocide, and we've begun to write a new story," she said. "We are witnessing the emergence of a generation that heeds the words 'Never Again,' and internalizes them."

Wiesel's speech was emotional. "I am here as a Jew because when we needed people to come to help us, nobody came," he said to the crowd. "Therefore, we are here. For the sake of humanity, save Darfur."

Sharpton said: "We know when Americans come together we can stop anything in the world. Let history write that we came together in the 21st century and stopped genocide in Sudan."

Speakers compared the situation in Darfur to the genocide the world witnessed 11 years ago in Rwanda, and demanded the world not stand by genocide any longer. Many called on the United States to use its power to get the United Nations and NATO to send peacekeeping forces to the region to assist the African Union's underfunded troops, charged with protecting civilians.

Clooney, who spoke with his father, Nick, recently returned from a trip to Darfur. The two have become spokesmen on behalf of the anti-genocide movement.

"The U.S. policy, the U.N. policy and the world's policy on Sudan is failing," the actor said. "There is hope,-there is you."

Akor, a Sudanese refugee at the rally, has lived in Kansas City for six years. "I feel grateful to the American people for their support for the people of Sudan," he said in an interview.

Jaclyn Cantor '08 and Sean Lewis-Faupel '08 were elected to serve on next year's STAND national executive committee.

"I'm so incredibly pumped, and I don't think it's going to go away," Cantor said after the rally. "I was worried it was going to be anti-climactic, but it wasn't."

Friday and Saturday before the rally, George Washington University hosted a STAND conference for students to lobby their elected officials on Capitol Hill and discuss community organizing strategies. Around 500 students from 46 states attended.

On the bus ride here Thursday night, Matt Rogers '08, who last month became the second president of Brandeis STAND, said the rally should be a starting point, rather than a stopping point for the movement. The rally is the culmination of STAND's year-long Power to Protect campaign, which calls for protection of Darfurians.

Brandeis' chapter, which has remained consistently active on awareness and advocacy campaigns, most recently has succeeded in convincing the University to pledge not to invest its funds in companies that support genocide in Darfur until the genocide ends.

The Brandeis chapter has been an integral leader in the movement since its emergence.

Kennedy, who became the movement's first Northeastern regional outreach coordinator. "Brandeis can't end genocide in Sudan, but if it's students, every student, everywhere [is] taking action now for Darfur, that's huge," he said.

Daniel Millenson '09, the executive director of the Sudan Divestment Task force, which works on university, city and statewide campaigns, said this movement is different because members don't protest for media attention.

"We usually work just by meetings and presenting research," he said. "I guess that's not really sexy or anything.but it's such a different era."

Though STAND will remain student-run, it becomes part of the Genocide Intervention Network next month. Joining the organization makes STAND a permanent student fixture against genocide.

"You can't have a movement without a people, but you also can't have it without resources and tools," Mazursky said.

Samantha Power, the author of A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, spoke to STAND Saturday about pushing the United Nations to send peacekeeping forces to the region.

Students in STAND make up the "Rwanda generation," Power said later. "You can't believe how Clinton could have allowed 800,000 people [to die].