October 11, 2017
Volume 144, Issue 8 News Pages 1-3 Pick your mentor skillshop
Opinion Page 4 Importance of journalists
washburnreview.org Sports Pages 9-12
Features Pages 5-8 Senior recitals
Jacob Klemz profile
Washburn’s SAI chapter wins national award Whitney Clum Washburn Review whitney.clum@washburn.edu
Washburn’s Sigma Alpha Iota chapter has gained national attention and for their outstanding philanthropic work and for exemplifying the standards that their fraternity espouses. The women’s music fraternity was chosen among 227 fellow chapters to win the Katherine Becker National Collegiate Chapter Achievement Award. According to SAI’s mission statement, the organization’s main goals are encouraging, nurturing and supporting music in women of all ages, races and nationalities. In light of their numerous regional and state awards in recent years for their performances and work with their community, they have lived up to their mission statement. As such, recommendation letters, which are necessary in order to win these awards, poured in from regional and state officers for Washburn’s chapter based on its philanthropy and activities that it has both hosted and engaged in. The province award was a certificate for the Theta A province, where Washburn was chosen among four chapters. The second award, the regional award, recognized them as the top performing chapter in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. The aforementioned Kath-
Photo courtesy of Sigma Alpha Iota
erine Becker award was for the entirety of the United States. Josey Trimble, senior music education major, said that her fraternity’s Voices of American Women concert played a large role in earning her chapter its many accolades. “This year, we got the award for the Judy Coder concert Voices of American Women,” Trimble said. “I worked with Jessica Knieff and Anna Glover for a philanthropic concert last year, and that was based around American women, so all of our songs were by American women. It was an empowerment thing since composers all over the world are generally men.” Despite being a small-
er chapter comprised of 16 members, SAI is quite active in the community. According to Trimble, her fraternity hosts Washburn’s annual middle school solo and ensemble festival, and is constantly coming up with new ways to encourage music education in the community. “So far this year we’ve done a Girl Scout badge workshop to have girls earn different skills,” Trimble said. “We are doing a Relay For Life to raise money for our national philanthropy and we’ll have a booth there to help fund raise our annual middle school solos and ensembles festival. It’s like the high school ones, but it’s more relaxed ... it’s to get the experience and
perform out in public.” Along with all of the benefits to the community, merely having membership in SAI adds quality to the college experience, according to Sydney Donaldson, junior music education major. “I was the kind of girl who thought they would never join a Greek organization,” said Donaldson. “I thought greek girls were all ditzes, then I found out that SAI was a professional fraternity...All of the girls in SAI were so warm and encouraging. I felt all of their love and support.” SAI has made it easy to get involved with its many activities. Despite being a music fraternity, neither a music major nor minor is
required. To gain membership, each person must pass at least one of the music classes available on campus, maintain a certain grade point average and undergo training over the fraternity’s history and goals. “I feel people around campus don’t know about this opportunity,” Trimble said. “A lot of people take music classes. You can take the Enjoyment of Music class and be considered. It’s a great opportunity to be involved in music in the community. We are always looking for more women. It’s really fulfilling. It’s always good to see a smile on their faces if you like helping out with younger people and love music.”
and women at an alarming rate, and this invisible industry is thriving in Kansas. On the attorney general’s website, Kansas is identified as an originating state for human trafficking, which means children in our home state are at a higher risk of being affected by human trafficking than in others. According to Derek Schmidt’s, Kansas Attorney General, website, experts view human trafficking as the second largest criminal enterprise in the world, second only to the illegal sale of drugs. More than 83 percent of human trafficking involves domestic survivors, the majority of them being children. Freedom’s Promise, a non-profit founded and based in Tennessee, is an organization working to prevent human trafficking in Cambodia through community building initiatives. Amber Cunningham, founder, shared insight about some of the misconceptions surrounding human trafficking.
“When a lot of people think of human trafficking, they think that it is an overseas problem or if it’s happening here, it’s immigrants who have come over for that purpose,” Cunningham said. Cunningham explained that the human trafficking industry is not one that discriminates against ethnicity, economic background or where you live. All children are at risk. She said that I-70, which runs through Topeka, is a popular corridor for human traffickers, particularly those transporting children. “Don’t assume that because we’re in the heartland of America that we’re safe, because we’re not,” Cunningham said. To combat that this, it is imperative that parents and educators become aware of how children are being targeted and exploited. Traffickers are trained to pinpoint vulnerabilities in children, such as isolation and disengagement, to identify them as targets for sex trafficking, according to
Cunningham. While there is a strong need for preventative education against human trafficking, strengthening victim advocacy programs is equally as important. Dorthy Halley, division director for victim services in the Attorney General’s office, talked about how difficult it is for survivors of trafficking to transition back to normal life outside of the sex trade industry. Halley said that for those involved in prostitution, many of them were first introduced to the industry as children. This is a lifestyle that they are used to, and without an education to fall back on, survivors often believe that a life outside of sex trafficking is beyond their reach. “Even though they don’t have chains around their feet, they are enslaved,” Halley said. Halley has direct experience with survivors of human trafficking. She says the trauma that these women and children have experienced is extremely
complex. There is no way of knowing the danger the survivors are in if they cooperate with law enforcement. When survivors testify against their traffickers, they may be putting their lives in danger and not enough is being done to protect them, according to Halley. Halley referenced a study that was done in New York City that found that one of every eight children trafficked in New York over a five year period originated from Kansas. She said that it is hard to know the accuracy of this study, though, as so many cases go unreported and survivors often say what their traffickers told them to say. “We know that Kansas has a problem,” Halley said. “It is so underground that it is hard to know how big that problem is.” Topeka has one of the highest rates of human trafficking in the nation, according to Emily Steimel, public education coordinaTrafficking on page 2
Modern day slavery alive and well in heartland
Jessica Knieff Washburn Review jessica.knieff@washburn.edu
The darkest industry in our country is one that buys and sells commodities like any other, except that the “products” on this market are individuals being bought and sold as sex slaves. Sex trafficking is a form of human trafficking that primarily affects children
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