Anti-slavery activist Kevin Bales called on
students to start demanding that their campuses become slave-free.
“No university has done the work to say ‘we are
slave free,’” Bales said.
Bales, co-founder of the organization Free the
Slaves, suggested that students begin to demand that their universities become
slave-free during his Feb. 6 lecture.
This would mean that nothing - from the products that are
available on campus to the investments made on behalf of the university -
is associated with slavery.
A CougSync group dedicated to anti-slavery efforts opened for
students to join as of Feb. 11.
Sarah Hogan, lectures
programmer for the Student Entertainment Board, said that the movement will take time and momentum by the global movement to have more significant campus impact.
“It’s going to be a process to
figure out what we have on this campus that has slave involvement,” Hogan said.
More than 350 people attended the lecture online
while 250 attended in person, according to Hogan.
Global Campus,
Global Connections, the Anthropology Graduate Organization and the Student Entertainment
Board presented the lecture on the causes and effects of modern-day global
slavery.
This joint effort brought
the issue of modern slavery to the attention of those who might
not otherwise have been interested in the subject, said Emily Casillas, a member
of the Anthropology Graduate Organization. According to Casillas, many of her students
who attended the lecture expressed surprise and dismay at the fact that slavery
still exists.
Many of the
statistics that Bales presented compared modern slavery to the slavery in the
history books.
During the course of
the last four centuries, the average price for a single slave totaled $40,000. Today the average global price for a single slave is $90.
“People have gone
from being investments to being disposable inputs,” Bales said.
While the price
for a slave varies from country to country, Bales has found a connection between environmental destruction and slavery.
According to Bales, slavery is the third-largest producer of carbon dioxide emissions,
falling just behind the U.S. and China.
The environmental
impact of slavery is one reason for the liberation of the world’s slaves beyond
the morality of the issue, said Bales.
To liberate all 27
million of the world’s slaves would cost $10.8 billion said Bales. That is the amount that Americans spend annually on movie
tickets, Bales said.
What Bales does not want to happen following the liberation
of the world’s slaves is what he calls a “botched emancipation.”
“We want to end
slavery without a war and without anybody becoming a second-class citizen,”
Bales said.
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