Oklahoma Christian University is extremely verbal in their support of the anti-trafficking movement. From OCMA and the Red Thread Movement to chapel speakers and documentary film screenings, our community embodies overwhelming support to the struggle the world faces against modern slavery.
Yet in the last month, four social clubs and the Student Government Association have held fundraising “date auctions.” And no one seems to understand this irony.
Real human trafficking is one of the worst crimes imaginable, and the thought of it occurring in our own city is sickening, but pretending to sell people – auctioneer and all – is just good Christian fun!
I wonder what percentage of money made by SGA was then given to OCMA. I wonder how many people being sold wear the red chord, which symbolizes bringing awareness of human trafficking and prostition, around their wrist. But mostly I wonder why this double standard has never been addressed.
Now, double standards are an entirely different complaint at this university, but most of those have to do with school policies and administrative decisions. This issue is entirely student originated and perpetuated on the student level.
The student body collectively decided human trafficking was an issue they wanted to be involved with, then many individually decided they needed to sell people to raise money.
The rest of us just decided to look away. We didn’t speak up and say it was wrong; we didn’t even make jokes about the irony. At most we groaned that all this school cares about is marrying us off. When something affronts your moral standards, even on the smallest level, why don’t we lash out against that?
The truth is, things like this don’t bother us because there is a disconect between what we say we believe and what we actually believe. We say we want world peace and everyone to be saved. We say we want to stop human trafficking and slavery. Yet we sit around in our comfortable lives laughing at war movies, a lost world and the fake selling of our friends and classmates.
If everyone actually believed the things they said, believed with action and not just words, they would then be horrified by this incredibly appaling practice.
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