The forum will be focused on the disappearance of 43 students during a protest Sept. 26 in Mexico that left six people dead.
“We feel empathetic of this,” IU graduate student Gaëlle Le Calvez said.
IU graduate student Tamara Mitchell said violence such as this is rampant yet widely ignored on a global scale because of its ?frequency.
The forum is meant to raise awareness of the ?situation.
“It’s kind of a show of solidarity and outrage,” she said.
This is an opportunity to let people know violence is all too common, and police and drug dealers are working together at times, IU graduate student José Luis Suarez said.
Le Calvez said the open forum will be hosted by professors who can analyze and discuss the situation in Mexico.
This forum will inform and educate the community, she said.
Mitchell said they would like to read the missing students’ names to remind people that the names they see and hear are real ?humans.
The professors attending will include Peter Guardino from the Department of History, Bradley Levinson from the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies and John McDowell from the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, according to a press release.
Mitchell said the professors are very familiar with the politics of Mexico and will have a question-and-answer section during which people will be able to pose questions about the politics of the area to the professors.
Le Caldez said they will try to livestream the event.
Suarez expanded on the atrocities of the abductions, saying one of the bodies found was marked in a way that implied drug dealers were involved. Despite this, the police were the ones who killed six during the protest.
These protests occur annually and mainly involve students, Mitchell said.
Newspapers post the number of days missing on every issue, she said.
“It’s kind of, I don’t know, an upsetting and scary event,” Mitchell said.
Le Calvez said some details of the deaths and abductions have not been confirmed, but most of the facts presented thus far have been agreed upon by the public.
Several mass graves were discovered during the hunt for the 43 missing students.
Within the graves were some of the missing 43, but they were buried alongside dozens of other people not involved, Suarez said. Many of these casualties were civilians.
From a humanitarian perspective, it’s very shocking, Le Calvez said.
Mitchell said families of the missing are permitted to bring DNA from their loved ones to mass grave sites in order to test the bodies and confirm ?identities.
“It turned itself into a representation of the longevity of the situation,” she said.
Suarez said this issue is important to people in the United States because of its involvement with Mexican government and even in the Mexican drug trade.
Mitchell said the relationship isn’t common knowledge.
Despite this lack of knowledge, the forum is not meant to cast blame on the U.S. for its current involvement with Mexico.
“I don’t think this global forum is trying to point fingers,” she said.
Instead, the goal of the forum is to discuss the problems of violence and corruption openly and seek out solutions.
Mitchell said she thinks people should be informed about what is happening to fellow students.
“I don’t just want to write about it in five years,” Mitchell said.
Suarez said people have a moral responsibility to act now.
Le Caldez agreed, adding that since people in the U.S. have the freedom to speak out, they should do so.
One of the best ways to do this is to use social media, Mitchell said.
“Not to be indifferent — that’s a good small step,” Le Caldez said.
She said social media can be even more telling than newspapers because of the personal elements they include.
As people learn more information, they need to share it with others, she said.
Mitchell said they need to keep the government ?accountable.
These kinds of responses show how complicit people feel their government has been, Mitchell said.
“People are fed up and taking it into their own hands,” she said.
