The beating African drum echoed off the walls of a lower Usdan packed with hungry students Saturday afternoon, calling them to look up and watch the procession through the cafeteria. Eyes lifted from wraps, burgers and salads, perplexed as the group of about 50 students marched past them in sync with the beat. Most students stared, trying to make sense of what was going on.While some students reacted with either passivity or confusion to this Dream for Darfur Olympic March, the event's student organizers, members of Brandeis' chapter of STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition, were simply aiming to catch their attention and raise their awareness.

The event was one of hundreds of similar marches that took place this past summer and are occuring this fall as part of a national and international effort to shed light on China's connection to genocide in Darfur and how that issue will be highlighted at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

"Brandeis is known as being a really politically and socially aware campus, but for [STAND], aware means that students know that people are dying in Darfur," said Daniel Millenson '09, president of STAND Brandeis. "But they don't know about the China connection. That's what this march is for."

China is one of Sudan's main trading partners, according to STAND and the Dream for Darfur Web sites. Sudan sells China oil and China sells weapons to the Sudanese government. Millenson explained that if China were to "starve the Sudanese government economically," it could put enough pressure on the government to end the genocide.

Dream for Darfur is the initative that is helping to organize the relays. The campaign hopes to use the 2008 Olympics as a way of combating genocide by making the event a stage to bring the issue to the forefront of international consciousness.

"[China] wants to put its best face forward for the world [at the Olympics], and they don't want to be seen as a dictatorship that supports genocide or as the regime that ran students over with tanks at Tiananmen Square, and we're going to ruin that for them unless they change their policies," Millenson said during the march.

The students marched to the drumming, holding their signs with a symbolic paper torch signed by student marchers explaining their cause to onlookers who watched passively while being called out to join.

Many STAND members, such as Stephanie Marcovici '09, weren't discouraged by these reactions.

"We're a smaller part of a worldwide effort," Marcovici said. "We want to bring awareness to our community and we would have loved having more people come, but we were seen and people [knew] what was going on."

Millenson said he was comforted by the fact that some students who marched weren't STAND members.

"There are people here who don't usually come to STAND meetings or who aren't a part of STAND, he said. "At least we are exposing the situation to the campus."

The only time the beating of the drum stopped during the march was when STAND members would halt the crowd to read testimonials of genocide survivors. At one such stop, in East Quad, STAND member David Drayton '09 read a testimonial of a man who was beaten severely for three hours by the Janjaweed, the government backed militia, on the way to gather firewood. As Drayton's voice rose over the otherwise silent quad, a face peaked through a third-story window, listening intently to the story.

At the end of the march, students gathered on the patio outside the Shapiro Campus Center to listen as Sarra Ali, a woman from Northern Sudan and a student at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, said a few words thanking everyone for marching. Ali does advocacy work for Darfur, including volunteering with My Sister's Keeper, a woman-led humanitarian action group. Ali commended the marching students for their support and said that they inspired her.

Millenson said that the Dream for Darfur campaign's initiatives help bring much-needed attention to the issue of genocide, particularly in the eyes of international bodies such as the United Nations.

"Foreign policy experts keep citing [Dream for Darfur] as a huge element in the Sudanese government allowing U.N. peacekeepers," he said. "So people say this campaign is trite, and maybe it is, but it's also working."

Editor's Note: Editorial assistant Anya Bergman is a member of STAND.