Alex Rodriguez | Los Angeles Times | MCT

Residents of the flood-ravaged town of Ghaspur jam into a boat to retrieve food and supplies in Pakistan. They chose to stay behind and protect their possessions rather than evacuate their flooded lands. Student groups will be pulling together in a massive fundraising effort to raise awareness and collect donations through numerous events on campus.

These efforts stand in contrast to student efforts in responding to the devastating flooding in Pakistan since July. Floods have killed between 1,300 and 1,600 people and have displaced 20 million people, or one-eighth of the population.

“I don’t understand why more groups on campus haven’t taken up this effort, but I think it’s in line with the nation at large,” said junior Monis Khan, president of Drop Knowledge.

Students in Drop Knowledge, Kuumba.tv, the Gargoyle and Ashoka are all taking action.

They will be raising money for the KASHF Foundation, which provides food to Pakistanis displaced by the floods. The foundation can feed a family of five for $65, and a meal is only 25 cents.

“By giving the families the security that they have food to eat for a month, you enable them to take care of other parts of their lives that are just as urgent,” Khan said.

The money will be raised through tabling and selling shirts for $10 in the DUC, a Brother Ali concert Wednesday night, part of the profits from Diwali and an art installation that takes donations.

Drop Knowledge hopes to raise at least $1,000 before Diwali.

Providing relief to Pakistan is particularly important to Khan, who is the son of Pakistani immigrants. The recipient of a social change grant, Khan also taught children in Karachi, Pakistan this summer.

“It hit really close to home when I realized that a lot of them were caught in the floods when they went home right before school started,” Khan said.

So Khan decided to start the movement to raise awareness and funds for an event that many students are unaware of.

“I don’t really know about it,” sophomore Angela Senne said. “No one’s really talking about it.”

This attitude is exactly what Khan wants to change.

“It’s been frustrating because there’s a lot of opportunities for people to give, but Pakistan seems to be the most popular country in the world when it comes to international news,” Khan said. “It’s highlighted in such a negative light that people…it’s hard for them to sympathize.”

“It’s also such a massive catastrophe, but it didn’t kill a lot of people, so it’s hard for them to understand it. Sixteen percent of the country is still underwater,” he said.

Other students who have heard about the flood are also troubled by the apparent lack of awareness.

“The University could have brought someone who was involved in the flood to make us aware of it,” said sophomore Fahim Masoud, who is originally from Afghanistan. “Many students get their information from the media, which can be misleading.”

When Khan first approached Student Union with a fundraising idea, he was referred to planning with the Gargoyle, which has benefited from the increased funds of the Social Programming Board, a new administrative body in this year’s Student Union.

With the help of Kuumba.tv and the Gargoyle, Drop Knowledge was able to book Brother Ali, a political hip-hop artist, to help raise money.

“It’s important to get people on campus who, when they say something or perform, they move you somewhere. It transports you. It focuses you to challenge the structures in your life,” Khan said of Brother Ali’s music. “It’s righteous music that propels people to want to be better.”

The concert will be held Wednesday, Oct. 27 at 8 p.m. Students can enter for free, but a $5 donation is suggested.

Students can also purchase T-shirts for $10 in the DUC until Nov. 13.

Drop Knowledge is creating an art installation that will be able to collect funds. The installation, located on the north side of the DUC, will feature a flooded fish tank with a house inside of it. Every time someone donates money, some of the water will be released from the tank.

Zack Cupkovic | Student Life

In 2009, students participate in the first Live Art event by painting on blank canvases provided for on-the-spot creative expression. Live Art returns this Saturday, April 17.

Drop Knowledge, a fledgling group that promotes creative thought and action, is hosting Live Art on Saturday, April 17, in the Gargoyle. The event will start at 6:30 p.m. and will last several hours; attendees are welcome to come and go as they please. Live Art is meant to get students thinking creatively about campus programming and the world around them. Drop Knowledge P resident Monis Khan, a junior, believes that Wash. U. students are stuck in a rut.

“We have so many resources and wonderful people here, but too many people are happy to do what’s expected of them or what they’re used to,” Khan said. “So many groups just repeat the same programs they did last year instead of trying to get outside the box. People aren’t pushing boundaries anymore—they’re playing it safe.”

Khan’s main objective is to influence other student groups and to make Wash. U. events more meaningful. “Our programming on campus should speak to the present and the future, not to the past,” he said. “Groups need to break out of their past events and try something spontaneous and exciting.”

Khan hopes to bring a new level of involvement and innovation to campus through Live Art. Three different bands will be performing throughout the evening, including an up-and-coming Chicago-based group, Blah Blah Blah, a campus favorite, the Noam Chomskys and a reputable St. Louis hip-hop group, Lavelle Spitz.

Drop Knowledge also recruited two local visual artists to come perform at Live Art. Daniel Burnett and Bradley Pipkin were the first and second place winners of Schlafly Brewery’s graffiti arts contest and will be part of the main attraction at tomorrow’s event. Burnett describes his art as “a combination of traditional and urban influences.” He believes Live Art could be an especially interesting experience for him as he explained that “my artwork is a fickle thing to me at the moment. I feel like I’m not quite mature and still doing a lot of experimenting[…] I simply see it as a means to personal progression.”

This kind of personal progression is exactly what Live Art is all about, according to Khan. “It’s not just about watching the professionals work,” he said. “Watching them just sets the tone, creates an atmosphere, but it’s really about what others do on their own—what people are able to create. It’s going to have a really festive, totally crazy, awesome vibe.”

Live Art is not entirely new to Wash. U., as it was also done last year, but attendees can certainly expect a completely different experience this Saturday. “We’ve added a lot of new elements [to the event],” Khan said. “Since we weren’t an official group last year, we had a lot less resources and a lot less support. We couldn’t draft contracts, so we couldn’t bring in any outside performers… we didn’t have much money, there were just a lot of restrictions. I think we put on a great event last year, but this year it will be something else entirely.”

With $4,500 garnered from class councils, CS40, Student Union, Connect 4 and Amnesty International, Drop Knowledge is providing participants with 150 blank canvases and various art supplies to create their own art on site. The steps of Bowles Plaza will be covered to provide an ideal arena for body painting. There will also be fabric markers for people to create original artworks on clothing and various interactive installations.

“It’s like being back in Kindergarten,” Khan said. “You can just cover every surface in art. You don’t have to worry about being talented, that’s not what it’s about. You can just be in the moment, creating something, expressing something.”

Drop Knowledge focused their efforts on providing an atmosphere in which people aren’t afraid to let go and fully express themselves. Live Art is primarily a fundraiser. The $400 that was collected at last year’s event was given to City Faces, a St. Louis charity program. This year, the group hopes to make even more money and 100 percent of the proceeds from all auctions and sales will go to the Turner Center for the Arts.

Khan hopes that participants will really make the event their own. “The organic element is very important,” he said. “It’s spontaneous expression, so it will hopefully be a different experience for each person.”

Khan hopes this event will reinvigorate the student body and show them what is possible, while simultaneously giving students a brand new look at last year’s Live Art experience. “Basically, it will be a lot sexier than last year,” Khan promised.

Sophomore Celso White, senior John Huang and junior Monis Khan never expected that a simple discussion they had about hip-hop on campus last April would develop into such a large event. After the dissolution of Wash. U.’s chapter of Hip-Hop Congress, a club that promoted social and political awareness through hip-hop, the students sought to revive this form of dialogue on campus.

“A lot of people see hip-hop skewed by the media as talking about rapping and getting money. I really wanted to go back to the true essence of hip-hop that started back to when it was first developed,” Huang said. “It was…about political action and just expressing yourself through music, attitude, dance, artwork and everything.”

They came up with the idea to bring Rap Sessions, a travelling panel of prominent hip-hop scholars, to speak on the question “Is America Really Post-Racial?” at Wash. U.

“Their faces don’t pop out at people like Kanye West or Jay-Z…but these people are well respected in their fields,” White said.

In addition, White, Huang and Khan, who are separately involved in WuSlam, WuCypher and Drop Knowledge, thought of ways that their individual clubs could contribute to the event. With the goal of fostering cultural awareness and uniting people through hip-hop, the students reached out to a variety of organizations, including Eleven Magazine and Team 31.

“I thought this was a good opportunity for us to re-establish that umbrella organization for all the student groups on campus, especially because there’s been a lot of new hip-hop-oriented groups,” Huang said.

Beginning in September, weekly meetings were held to coordinate activities for Hip-Hop Against Hunger. As the students explained, each campus group involved follows hip-hop in its own way and thought up unique contributions for the week.

The diverse expressions of hip-hop can be seen in the final list of events, which includes an open-mic night, a dance workshop, a graffiti show, a freestyle competition, a fashion show and a bboy/bgirl dance-off. Hip-Hop Against Hunger will culminate in a hip-hop festival on Nov. 14, featuring The Paxtons, iLLphonics and RJD2.

Click schedule to view a larger version

“We’re trying to go back and visit all the four elements of hip-hop: break dancing, DJ-ing, graffiti art and MC-ing,” Huang said.

While Hip-Hop Against Hunger will take place on the Wash. U. campus, the students want it to impact the greater St. Louis area. The events are open to everyone with the hope that others will join in on the celebration of hip-hop.

“A big thing that appeals to me about hip-hop is about the community, like how hip-hop can bring about camaraderie and just bring a group of people together under a united interest,” Huang said.

Hip-Hop Week will also give back to the local community through donations. All proceeds from the festival will go to Operation Food Search, a St. Louis food bank, and there will be donation bins for canned food at the events.

By involving the St. Louis community along with many campus groups, the founders of Hip-Hop Week hope that this event will occur annually.

“We just want to explain to everyone the essence of [hip-hop], where it came from, and how it’s going to blow up,” White said.