The News Record

Issue date: 1/28/08 Section: College Living

Media Credit: Raven Bull Emily Cao and Sam Anneken work on their Darfur Web site, which started out as a class project for an English class.

In most freshman English classes, students learn different techniques that implement the use of style, grammar and tone in their writing. Many classes require students to put the elements learned into a well-thought-out research paper. But for students from Mica Darley's autumn Honors English 102 class, research went beyond writing to allowing the research to create activity and discussion on the genocide in Darfur.

Instead of creating formal research papers, students in Mica Darley's class had the opportunity to create a Web site. Students created www.cincinnatifordarfur.org , a Web site dedicated to sharing and educating others about the conflict in Darfur.

"We had been discussing genocide and Darfur had been one of the subjects we talked about, so we did decided to do our project on it," said Sam Anneken, a first-year chemical engineering student.

"As a teacher, I wanted to emphasize research not as something confined but rather as a living, breathing important thing that can help shape ideas," said Darley, a doctoral student in English.

The class, through its unique format of using rhetoric and argumentation as important elements of writing, focused on social injustice and humanitarianism around the world. Students watched Hotel Rwanda and read A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmeal Beah, which documented his experience as a child soldier in Sierra Leone. The class also got the chance to meet Beah, according to Darley.

The class also focused on the idea of social invisibility, its affect on social norms and how writing fits into the picture.

"Writing allows us to see these things or issues that are hidden," Darley said.

Darley also invited Nick Clooney, a journalist, television host and former politician to come and speak to her class.

"I asked him to come for a couple of reasons," Darley said. "First, because he's a writer and knows the power of written and spoken word and second, because his work in Darfur was something interesting to talk about."

For Chelsea Gidden, a first-year musical theater student, it was Clooney's visit that sparked the students' interest in doing a project on Darfur.

Continued...

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