More than 1,000 signatures from faculty, staff and students at Ithaca College will be collected and sent to representatives in Washington, D.C., to raise awareness and help stop genocides in the world.

This December, STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition, will be taking part in Pledge2Protect, a nationwide grassroots movement geared toward raising awareness about genocide prevention.

During the weeklong event from Dec. 1 to Dec. 7, members of the group will be working to get 1,000 signatures on a pledge, signifying the campus community is aware of genocide as a national issue and support prevention.

Junior Sarah Burleson, treasurer of STAND, said the signatures at the college will become a part of a much larger movement.

 “We’re getting everyone together and showing that we are united in this thinking and we want something to be done about it,” she said.

The pledge will be the first event, besides a trivia night earlier in the year, for STAND this semester. Junior Rachel Merkin, co-president of STAND, said the student group was reorganizing and did not have much time to plan events. But later in December, the organization will join with other human right groups on campus for IC Justice Night, an event featuring performers and groups discussing human rights.

Merkin said the goal of collecting pledges isn’t to gain support of a particular bill but is to inform the college community about the atrocities happening around the world.  

“It’s really to raise awareness and make noise in the political community and to try to raise awareness of the conflicts on campus,” she said. “We’re trying to access as many students in the campus community as possible.”

As the first event of its kind for the organization, the college’s STAND chapter has set its goal at 1,000 because it would show that almost one sixth of the student body had participated, Merkin said. In order to achieve its goal, the organization is relying on grassroots activism.

“We have never done anything like this before, but we’re all really excited because the genocide prevention movement is a grassroots movement,” she said. “It all just started out of ordinary people [becoming active].”

David Turkon, assistant professor of anthropology, said STAND is trying to encourage people to act to prevent genocides in Darfur and Burma.

“This is something we should all be concerned about,” he said. “This stuff happens, and it becomes normalized [when] we should be appalled every time it happens”

Merkin said she hopes the event will help the college community think of ways to help end genocides.  

“People [on campus] are aware of what’s going on,” she said. “We’re a pretty politically active and aware community, but I think that students need to be more engaged in ending [genocide].”

STAND’s goal for this event is to inspire action through education on a local level.

“Our hope is a spark of action,” Merkin said. “Education is a cause for action because if you don’t know what’s going on, you’re not going to try to stop it. If we can raise the level of awareness and education then … the logical next step would be to raise the action on campus.”