On Wednesday evening, students gathered in Wilder Hall for a teach-in about the recent unrest in Nepal. The entire event was planned and orchestrated by three Nepalese first-year students within 24 hours after massive protests erupted across their home nation on Monday, setting fire to its parliament and leading to the resignation of its prime minister.
“It came from this feeling of helplessness, not knowing what to do, [and] feeling guilty for not being there in a sense, because it is difficult being so far away and … [difficult] getting in touch with people, getting the correct news about what’s happening on the ground,” College first-year Saumik Sharma said about the impetus for the event.
Sharma originally wanted to plan a candlelight vigil; however, by Tuesday morning after leaders resigned and government buildings were destroyed, he felt that a teach-in would be more appropriate.
“Considering the fact that there was a lot of misinformation going around about the context of why the protest started, we decided that we needed to spread more information,” College first-year Eurika Shrestha, another organizer, said. “So we decided to go for an information session, and we structured it in a way where, first of all, we would give a small presentation about what was going on, give people the timeline of what happened, and then give context of why it might have happened in our country.”
The students worked with Professor of Anthropology Erika Hoffman-Dilloway to quickly organize and publicize the event. The organizers said around 80 people attended the event, exceeding their expectations. The teach-in included an informational section on Nepal’s political history, a moment of silence for the lives lost — over 30 people have been killed in the unrest — and ended with a Q&A session and open discussion.
The organizers said they wanted to convey to attendees the larger context behind the protests that might not be captured in mainstream media coverage.
“There were a lot of international news [outlets] who were going on and on about how it was a social media ban,” College first-year Saman Gurung, another organizer, said. “It’s as if Gen Z is so frivolous that they’re mad over social media, but that wasn’t the case. The real … problem was corruption.”
At the end of the teach-in, the students spoke about their own experiences as international students watching a revolution in their home country.
“The situation was very urgent,” Shrestha said. “Things were going down very quickly. We lost contact with our family for a whole day because the internet was down, because the electricity city poles were taken down. … [A key takeaway of the teach-in] was knowing the experience of us as international students and why we were grieving so much as well.”
Gurung also said expressing the perspective of a Nepalese international student was important.
“Now that people actually know what’s happening in Nepal as well, I think we can be much more open on how we are feeling,” Gurung said. “I think they’ll be able to empathize with us and empathize [with] all that is happening.”
College fourth-year JP Liddy said he felt the teach-in was eye opening for him and many of the students in attendance.
“It was a very packed room, which made me excited to see so many people genuinely interested in learning so much more,” Liddy said. “The event was very packed because living in the U.S., there’s so little that we hear about foreign politics, especially those in South Asia and Nepal. I know absolutely nothing about it. I do not know anything about their history of monarchies or the number of constitutions that they’ve gone through in just the last half a century.”
The organizers said that students who attended seemed engaged and interested in learning more about the situation in Nepal.
“I feel a sense of pride as well, knowing that — yes, it’s not a huge number — but at least 80 new people know about the situation,” Gurung said. “Maybe they’ll go around, they’ll tell their friends, and people will sense the urgency or people will sense what state Nepal is in right now.
Sharma said that even on the other side of the world, caring about Nepal could matter.
“The biggest thing that people outside Nepal can do right now is to create international pressure,” he said. “And that doesn’t have to be just on the government level, [it can be] for people on campus, for people everywhere around the world. Our voices online do carry weight in adding pressure towards other foreign governments toward what’s going on in Nepal and to try to push it into a better future.”
