St. Lawrence student makes classwork her cause

CANTON — St. Lawrence University student Shawn E. Austin is taking her homework to the next level.

As part of her "gender and society" class this semester, Miss Austin and her classmates were told to design — but not implement — an activism project. But after reading a play and some articles about do-it-yourself activism, the sophomore decided to do more than what the syllabus required.

She spent the past month organizing Saturday's 5K run to benefit the nonprofit Run for Congo Women, a branch of Women for Women International.

"There's technically no war going on, but in the aftermath, women continue to be used by the military and government; rape has become a weapon of war," said the 20-year-old native of Cape Cod, Mass. "I just got really hooked on it."

In 1998, the Hutu militias involved in the Rwandan genocide of the early 1990s were pushed over the border into the Congo and began fighting there. Other militias sprang up to fight them and then began fighting each other. Since the conflict began, 5.4 million people have been killed, according to the Run for Congo Women website.

Since Run for Congo Women began several years ago, the organization has raised more than $600,000 — enough to help nearly 1,500 women. Between registration fees to participate in the run and money she has raised herself, Miss Austin's run contributed more than $2,000, she said.

"I'm lucky that St. Lawrence is a very athletic campus," the philosophy major said. "It's just spreading like wildfire, I've gotten a lot of interest from people in Potsdam and the Canton community."

Though charity runs are not uncommon to the north country, or even to St. Lawrence students, Miss Austin combined the event with information tables in the student center and said she plans to start even earlier next year, to spread more information and create awareness about what is going on in the Congo.

"I think people get hit with a lot of charity runs and it gets kind of old, but this is something that a lot of people don't know about," she said. "It's gang rape and mutilation and torture; it's like nothing that we see here. It's a daily reality for women and children."

Nor is Miss Austin the only one from her class to put her proposal into action for "a little fraction of extra credit," according to course professor Zachary A. Dorsey. Another student is working to raise awareness about the drinking culture for college-aged women. Because beer is often considered a man's drink, Mr. Dorsey said, women tend to drink more mixed drinks, where the alcohol content is more difficult to track.

As a result, women are most frequently the ones who get sent to the hospital for drinking; one of the students is making a video to raise awareness that may be shown to incoming freshmen.

"It's not just NGOs and presidents and activists that effect change, it's people all over the world," Mr. Dorsey said. "On this smelly day, it just warms the cockles of my heart to be thinking about it."