News

3rd annual Tri-Co Peace Week to include panel on Iran-US relations, benefit concert by State Radio, and MLK Jr.

In print | April 3, 2008

The Tri-College community will be hosting Peace Week, a week of events to promote awareness of violence and the efforts to stop it.

Peace Week, which begins on Friday and lasts until the following Friday, was started in 2003 at Council Rock High School by Brandon Lee Wolff ’08 through his organization SAVE R US, and has expanded to all of Bucks County and Tri-Co. This will be the third year that Peace Week has been held at Swarthmore.

Throughout the week, different clubs will be hosting various events and workshops on the peace initiative at all three Tri-Co campuses. For the keynote events, special blue busses will be used to transport students between the three campuses. These events include the Martin Luther King, Jr. kick-off collection event, United for Peace: Tri-Co A Capella and Dance Jamboree, the Walk for Peace, a State Radio benefit concert and the 60s Peace Party Finale.

The week will feature several respectable speakers. This Friday, former Senator Harris Wofford, who was an advisor to Martin Luther King, Jr. and President of Bryn Mawr, will be speaking at Bryn Mawr. Also on Friday, Reverend Ralph Roy, a civil-rights activist, will speak at Swarthmore on the 40th anniversary of MLK’s assassination.

On Monday, Congressman Joe Sestak, Dr. Philip H. Gordon of the Brookings Institute and Dr. Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations will talk about US-Iran relations at Swarthmore at an event co-hosted by the College Democrats and Republicans.

Peace Week will start and end with peace pole dedications. This Friday there will be a peace pole dedication at Haverford to start the week and a dedication at Swarthmore the following Friday to end the week.

The poles will be five sided with pairs of two languages of conflicting peoples on each.

“I think it’s really cool that we are not only starting and ending with peace polls but that the peace polls are permanent structures on both campuses beyond this peace week and hopefully for many years to come,” Wolff said.

Peace Week does not focus on combating any single case of violence; rather, the events range from topics on violence in Philadelphia to the crisis in Sudan.

The event planners are very excited for the events and hope to spread awareness.

“I just think it’s cool that it’s not just the committee but that we get to work with the Tri-Co community and working with different clubs on campus and how they all can contribute to the idea of peace,” Assistant Coordinator Deivid Rojas ‘11 said. "It’s a great way to learn about different types of violence in our community in a more local way and learn about the different kind of perspectives on what peace can mean."

Wolff stressed that peace week is a combination of awareness and action and encouraged everyone to attend the events.

“I think it’s really important that students are not only aware, but that they get educated on issues that they may not already be knowledgeable about so they can take action,” he said.

For the complete schedule of Tri-Co Peace Week events at all three colleges, visit www.swarthmore.edu/x17874.xml.