Give the refugee crisis due attention

Major news sources have been buzzing for years with updates on the military conflict in Syria and how it has been affecting the region since it began in 2011. More specifically, the Syrian refugee crisis has commanded the attention of leaders across the world, particularly in Europe, with estimates exceeding four million registered refugees. Doing our part, President Obama ordered this month that the ceiling for the number of refugees admitted to the United States be raised to 85,000. A problem of this size, shattering the worlds of millions of people and their families, deserves attention and aid as best can be offered.

But while presidential candidate Donald Trump has said, “If I win, they’re going back,” many more are thankfully living and working with the reality of world affairs. The Durham community has long been open to receiving refugees though the epicenters of the crises are often thousands of miles away. The city has a burgeoning refugee population with more than 200 mostly Syrian refugees joining each year. In all, Durham actually accounts for nine percent of North Carolina's resettlement sites in the U.S., with North Carolina having the 10th-most refugees in the U.S., according to 2010 data. These numbers are great for the city considering the many economic benefits of settling refugees and the success refugee families have found after coming to Durham.

The crucial question for Duke students then is not how Durham should respond to Syrian refugees but rather why the humanitarian crisis abroad has not been trumpeted as a catastrophe and constructively debated on campus. Duke students and faculty emphasize community engagement. Each year, students organize different protests on campus, last year reading the names of genocide victims for 12 hours on the Plaza and Chapel steps and staging a hunger strike for Syrian refugees. Programs like DukeEngage, DukeImmerse and tutoring programs add service and academic opportunities for interested students, yet still the issue seems to have lowered to a simmer in terms of concern by typical students. Unless already pointed in that direction, students pick up and drop tragic headlines regularly with little more than a passing remark.

Somewhere inside the bubble of campus we lose attachment to outside issues. CNN banner updates on our phones and Twitter of course keep us well-apprised of situations, but we lock our phones once more and bury our heads in the books and other engagements of college life, missing the point of reading the news. We should continuously seek opportunities to step out of our classrooms, dorm rooms and meeting rooms, to initiate change or to lend support to those who already are.

We acknowledge that this accusation of apathy is not entirely fair. With full course loads and extracurricular schedules, our day-to-day lives often have us living in the short-term with our own paths prioritized in long-term thinking. However, if we aim to cultivate a population of leaders—some of whom will undoubtedly go on to work on these crises—we must strive to do more than make excuses about not being able to do anything. From making a point of understanding the nuances of the situation in Syria to attending a talk or activist event about the refugee crisis, students can gain knowledge of today’s affairs that will be the foundation for tomorrow’s world. For the student who is still just too busy, think of the four million refugees whose lives are now busy with circumstances they did not ask for and consider the merits of knowledge for knowledge’s sake, for a better tomorrow.