New club hopes to end human trafficking
OATH (Oregonians Against Trafficking Humans)
Hailey Hawkins
Issue date: 4/2/09 Section: Student Life
Once passed off as a plague to only third world countries, human trafficking has been gaining more attention as people come to realize that it has a presence in our own backyard.
The Oregonian Human Trafficking Task Force (OHTTF) is an organization that aims to do all it can to bring human trafficking to a halt in our state - for a start. This spring, a branch of OHTTF has reached the campus of Pacific University in the form of OATH (Oregonians Against Trafficking Humans), now a registered club.
Pacific is the first university in the state to charter OATH as a club. The club's main goals are to raise awareness about human trafficking and to eventually raise money to aid victims of human trafficking.
OHTTF is hoping that Pacific will be an example for schools like Portland State, Reed, George Fox, and the University of Portland, who can each begin an OATH branch of their own.
Pacific OATH president Celeste Goulding, junior, chose to start the club after meeting with the federal marshal of the Oregon Human Trafficking division and founder of the OHTTF, Keith Richardson.
Richardson asked if Goulding would be interested in starting up an OATH program at Pacific. Goulding took on the project her sophomore year and is finally seeing the project begin to take solid form.
"Student education about human trafficking was non-existent before the last few semesters, but now people are beginning to look at human slavery as a modern day issue," said Goulding.
The OATH branch at Pacific is the "prototype for OATH student activism," according to Goulding. Any student can help turn the tide of this crisis by simply reporting a possible crime situation to the national human trafficking hotline.
OATH plans on hosting a Slave Free Trade Fair some time in spring 2009 to help raise money for victims of human trafficking and would like to eventually establish a relationship with Pacific's optometry program to get free eye exams for them.
The Oregonian Human Trafficking Task Force (OHTTF) is an organization that aims to do all it can to bring human trafficking to a halt in our state - for a start. This spring, a branch of OHTTF has reached the campus of Pacific University in the form of OATH (Oregonians Against Trafficking Humans), now a registered club.
Pacific is the first university in the state to charter OATH as a club. The club's main goals are to raise awareness about human trafficking and to eventually raise money to aid victims of human trafficking.
OHTTF is hoping that Pacific will be an example for schools like Portland State, Reed, George Fox, and the University of Portland, who can each begin an OATH branch of their own.
Pacific OATH president Celeste Goulding, junior, chose to start the club after meeting with the federal marshal of the Oregon Human Trafficking division and founder of the OHTTF, Keith Richardson.
Richardson asked if Goulding would be interested in starting up an OATH program at Pacific. Goulding took on the project her sophomore year and is finally seeing the project begin to take solid form.
"Student education about human trafficking was non-existent before the last few semesters, but now people are beginning to look at human slavery as a modern day issue," said Goulding.
The OATH branch at Pacific is the "prototype for OATH student activism," according to Goulding. Any student can help turn the tide of this crisis by simply reporting a possible crime situation to the national human trafficking hotline.
OATH plans on hosting a Slave Free Trade Fair some time in spring 2009 to help raise money for victims of human trafficking and would like to eventually establish a relationship with Pacific's optometry program to get free eye exams for them.
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