The sights one sees everyday may be different this Saturday as the Kony 2012 event Cover the Night will take place. The streets may be covered during the night with pictures of Joseph Kony by supporters of the movement in an effort to make him infamous.
A panel discussing the issues in Africa, as well as the Kony epidemic, took place Monday at 12:30 p.m. in Utah State University’s Taggart Student Center auditorium.
The Kony 2012 YouTube video spread across the world with nearly 100 million hits and has caused a lot of controversy in the media.
The movie’s main goal is to bring awareness of the atrocities that Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army have committed against central Africa, namely Uganda.
Jason Russell, USU’s current programming vice president, saw the Kony 2012 video and knew he had to do something to help.
“There are about 15 of us who meet every week and discuss what we can do to help,” Russell said.
The panel evolved from these discussions where the group decided to make a spin off the slogan Cover the Night by having a Cover the Week at Utah State University.
One of the main concerns from the panel was the video-generated phrase, “make him famous.”
Patricia Ayaa, a panel member from Uganda, was particularly concerned by the term.
“In Uganda, people don’t see him as a celebrity like everyone else does,” Ayaa said. “People are wearing the name of a mass murderer on their wrists.”
The panelists and audience members discussed how to fix a seemingly unfixable problem. The panel ended with the idea that there is no current solution available and that the only thing to be done is repair.
“It may take a few years for the countries that Kony recently invaded to recover,” Ayaa said. “But it will take Uganda decades.”
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