Lessons of the Balkans: Bridge-Term Learning Experience in Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo Proves Life-Changing

For six UB Law students and their professor, the January bridge term brought them face to face with the harsh realities of war and its aftermath. For a seminar called "Identities, Nationalities and the Rule of Law," they traveled to Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo in a three-week intensive learning experience that left all involved both sobered and inspired.

The trip followed a fall-semester seminar that featured lots of reading, including assignments to read novels or poetry from the region and to look at films such as Milosevic on Trial.

But the students say nothing can compare to meeting the people whose homelands were so deeply affected by the early nineties war in Bosnia and the 1999 war and the mass expulsions of citizens of Albanian ethnicity from the Serbian province of Kosovo, which last year declared its independence from Serbia.

"We read a stack of material. We had an important reading group," says student Jayme Feldman. "But it was like Risk, the board game – pieces on a playing board. It was statistical and removed. Then we got to the country and met people, made friends our age, and those who experienced personal grief and loss. For me, I learned the importance of things you can't read in books."

That, says Professor Isabel Marcus, who led the seminar and the trip, was largely the point of the experience.

Serra Aygun, Sarah Brancatella, professor Isabel Marcus, Jimmy Farrell, Jay O'Shea, Jayme Feldman, and Jenny Rizzo in Belgrade, Serbia

"I have been going to the Balkans since the middle of the 1990s and have spent a lot of time standing in solidarity with the protest group, Women in Black in Belgrade," Marcus says. "The purpose of this trip was to try to listen, and hear, and learn from people from numerous sectors, especially non-governmental organizations, which have played major political roles. Unless you've been there, it's hard to understand how important NGOs are as a voice in the government-- as a voice to bring issues to the public attention, as well as in arguing legal cases."

Luxurious, it wasn't. The group stayed in youth hostels and endured cold showers and no heat because Russia had shut off a gas supply line to Bosnia. Says student Jay O'Shea: "You realize how good you have it at home when you don't have heat for a week, or hot water."

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While they were there, the students – all in their second or third year at the Law School – decided to make a film documenting their experiences and the voices of some of the people they met. The 23-minute film, shot with a video camera that O'Shea received for Christmas, covers Bosnia Herzegovina, Serbia and the breakaway republic of Kosovo.

The images and voices are striking: a cemetery where Bosniak war dead are buried; a sad-eyed gray-haired woman from the Mothers of Srebrenica, a group that seeks to give voice to the survivors of genocide; a warehouse full of green and blue duffel bags containing the bones of unknown victims; the ornate University of Pristina; a story about people of all ethnicities coming together to raise $1,700 for a young Serb boy who needed a hearing aid.

To a one, the students said the experience was life-changing.

"I am writing my seminar paper on the International Commission on Missing Persons, and in particular the human rights aspects of being able to identify human remains and provide that, at the very least, for their family members," says Serra Aygun. "One thing the ICMP will never be able to give the families is an understanding of how their family members died. Most of them were fleeing through the mountains or en route to other areas of Bosnia. They don't know exactly how they died or when they died. …

"Since I've been back, the first couple of days were strange. All of us experienced a disconnect when we returned. The little things that people were complaining about seemed to pale in comparison to the things these people were dealing with."

"I got a more expansive view of the society and government than you would get as a tourist," says Jimmy Farrell. "I could see the entirety of the societies in this country, how the government works and how it doesn't work, the operation of NGOs, and intergovernmental work through the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe."

Considering the legal systems in place, O'Shea says, "You learn the difference between being a mechanic and an engineer. There are a lot of people in these countries who are mechanics and who are working on things that are broken. In Bosnia, you have countless numbers of laws that contradict each other, three presidents, 13 or 19 constitutions. Not only is there so much bureaucracy going on, but you don't even know which bureaucracy applies to you."

The experience also led the students to examine their own political attitudes. Says Aygun: "I went over thinking Serbia was the aggressor. That was the blanket association I had with Serbia. To go there and spend time with people puts a face to that. A lot of the younger individuals we met were 5 at the time. At what point do you take accountability?

"I am thinking of the Women in Black. These were Serbian women who stood up and protested the war when it was incredibly unpopular to do so. They didn't vote for Milosevic, but they were taking responsibility for their country's actions. It makes us wonder, what is our personal responsibility for the war in Iraq? Now I have a very different feeling toward that, instead of just saying, I didn't vote for it."

But it is the people of the Balkans who will stay close to their hearts.

"The Mothers of Srebrenica: it's amazing how much loss they had endured," O'Shea says. "There was a woman in her 40s who said she had lost 56 men in her family, which was all the men in her family. She was able to say that very matter-of-factly. Some people our age said they never talked to their own parents about what role they played in the war, because they were afraid to know the answer."

Added Aygun: "Many of the people we met with were gaunt and thin; they were just exhausted. The suffering was written all over them."

But the student group, whose sixth member, Jennifer Rizzo, is also a tv journalist as well as a law student also recognized that learning the law through an experience like this was invaluable.

"It reaffirmed my passion for international human rights," Feldman says. "At many law schools, the demand is for the firms and the public interest. That's why programs like this are so important. This gives me hope and guidance on the kind of path I want to pursue."

Adds Sarah Brancatella: "This trip was not in isolation from my Law School experience. It was like a napoleon pastry – layers upon layers. For example, in the course I'm taking now on the federal courts, it strikes me about the complications of having a national court system in Bosnia. … The trip was not something that was a fun little aside, an asterisk for me. It was woven into my Law School education. It was an amazing experience, and I'm so glad I went."