NADIA STEFKO

“In formal terms, it is a conference on peace that is organized and run entirely by students. Students come from many states to participate, they give presentations of very high quality on sundry peace oriented topics…it’s a great time for students committed to peace to come together. In less formal terms, this could be the Woodstock of your generation…”

Just hours before the conference started on March 26, I went back and re-read this first fateful e-mail sent by the Director of Undergraduate Studies on October 1, 2003 to recruit students to join the planning committee for the annual Student Peace Conference. Then I called my lawyer (who also happens to be my father).

“ Dad,” I asked, “is it legal to withhold vital information in a document intended for public circulation?”

Where in that e-mail invitation, I wondered, was the disclaimer telling us that notes and hints from previous years’ conferences were few and far between? That precisely no one on the team would have had experience organizing a conference? Where was the notice forewarning me that when I agreed to co-chair the event, I was effectively agreeing to spend half of my final semester at Notre Dame on a schedule in which at least one of the three luxuries of time for homework, time with friends or time to sleep would be displaced on a daily basis by time to plan a peace conference?

The weekend that resulted from that effort was both enlightened and enlightening. More than 100 students from our own campus and from colleges and universities across the U.S. and Canada joined our planning team of 19 women and one man to witness the fruits of our several months of peace-scheming.

Mariclaire Acosta, a visiting fellow with the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, opened the conference on Friday night with candid reflections on her career as a human rights defender. On Saturday afternoon, Honduran peasant leader and land reform advocate Elvia Alvarado shared her story with a standing room only crowd gathered in the Hesburgh Center Auditorium. In closing the conference on Saturday evening, Notre Dame Law School professor Juan Mendez encouraged the students present to always be mindful of the conflicts that may arise when the desire for peace collides with the need for justice in a society.

It was, however, what transpired in the space between these three impassioned speeches that gave the conference its unique student essence. In breakout sessions, students presented papers, participated in panel discussions and attended interactive workshops on topics ranging from conflict mediation to political economy. In the evenings, our assembly of co-conspirators for peace gathered for food, drink, discourse…and samba dancing.

Two months and one college degree later, as I take my first tentative steps into the “real world” beyond Notre Dame, I am aware of yet another paragraph that was conspicuously absent from that first e-mail. It is the paragraph that counsels its reader not to leave the Kroc Institute undergraduate program without taking advantage of this unique opportunity to work and learn among a community of similarly bewildered yet invariably accepting fellow-organizers. It is the paragraph that forewarns of the friendships that will be forged during late night sessions of brainstorming for a common goal. This paragraph intimates that this conference is perhaps the university’s best not-for-credit course in creative thinking, decision-making, self-confidence and leadership by consensus.

Nadia Stefko, a 2004 graduate of Notre Dame, is an intern with the RFK Memorial Center for Human Rights in Baltimore.

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