Living Out the Eastern Motto Seeking Justice: Students Against Human Trafficking

Tuesdays are my busiest days. I feel like I can’t catch a break, and by the time my last class of the day has drawn to an end at 7:00, it takes something truly special to make me want to keep pushing on with my day before finally heading back to my dorm. SAHT is that “something special.”

Students Against Human Trafficking is a club that meets on Tuesday evenings, after the hectic running-arounds of Tuesday have quietly subsided. The stress of the day is replaced instead by a small group of students with a shared passion to set their Tuesday evenings aside and work together to raise awareness of human trafficking. This takes a variety of different forms. Sometimes it looks like a group of sleep-deprived college students running around campus late in the evening, researching and writing out statistics about trafficking on cardboard signs for the campus to wake up and observe throughout the next day. Other times it looks like cans of spray paint being shaken vigorously and used to adorn Eastern’s famous rock with our understanding of “what trafficking is.” It is a club meeting doing devotions together, praying together, and discussing how someone as seemingly powerless as a twenty-year-old could possibly tackle the ferocious, overwhelming monster that is human trafficking.

Eastern University stands for Faith, Reason, and Justice. My involvement in SAHT has given me a deeper understanding of why justice is an integral part of being a Christian in this fallen world. It shows me that the exhaustion of a long day is by no means an excuse for apathy. It shows me that students don’t have to blend into the thousands, but can band together and stand out in doing something that matters. It shows me that action can prove ineffective if awareness is not first raised. It shows me that awareness is turning the numbing statistics into real stories of real people with real pain who need others to come alongside them as a relief from their love-void lives.

Justice became more than just a powerful portion of a slogan once I became involved in SAHT. It became something difficult to strive towards, but empowering to witness emanating from college students so often misunderstood as unmotivated, lukewarm, and indifferent.