Stark naked, Kony descends

To start, we understand that most people are pretty sick of hearing about KONY 2012.

Invisible Children’s #STOPKONY campaign has been riddled with controversy. From the photos of the organization’s founders with guns, to the revelation that the finances of the organization were somewhat suspect, to the general feeling that a social media campaign in a first world country reeked of oversimplification and colonialism, #STOPKONY has had many, many problems.

The latest problem is with Jason Russell, Invisible Children’s latest viral video narrator.
On Thursday, March 15th, Russell was spotted in Los Angeles in only his underwear, or, as others report, completely naked. Videos show him running around an area with heavy traffic, yelling, dancing, and gesturing at cars and passers-by. Later witnesses reported that Russell was, at one point, publicly masturbating.

Over a week later, doctors have chalked Russell’s bizarre behavior up to “brief reactive psychosis,” defined as an “acute state brought on by extreme exhaustion, stress, and dehydration.”

As college students, we can all attest to the fact that exhaustion, stress, and dehydration do crazy things to a person. Most of us probably experience some combination of those three things on a weekly basis.

However, no one has been spotted running around the IU campus naked lately.

Despite Russell’s outburst, Invisible Children is trying to do a good thing. Their campaign strategy may be very flawed, but the fact that they’re campaigning at all is admirable.

However, what the people behind Invisible Children seem to consistently miss is that, in many cases, the founders, administrators, and even spokespeople of a charitable organization must be willing to step out of the spotlight and instead let the cause itself be the star.

Russell’s erratic behavior took even more attention from the “invisible” children that the organization wishes to represent. Whether he was really suffering from involuntary  “brief reactive psychosis,” or whether he was, as some have speculated, on drugs, his actions have caused yet more harm to a campaign with a reputation already sullied by other humiliations.

We support the efforts of people around the world to bring war criminals to justice. In the case of Invisible Children, we support their efforts to #STOPKONY, especially when supplemented with more correct and current information, as well as a bit of post-colonialist sensitivity. Nonetheless, their campaign has been hit so hard by scandals that, at this point, it will take a massive regrouping and public relations effort to get it to where it once was.

Even in light of Russell’s recent display, has #STOPKONY done more harm than good?

Perhaps not.

But will Invisible Children survive to see the good that they want done?

That’s a question that only the organization itself will be able to answer through its actions in the next few weeks.