Event held at Student Center

Rescue The Girl held a public screening of its film, "Worth Fighting For," at the Sam Rayburn Student Center on Tuesday, April 26.

Detailing the story of four young college students' goal to spread awareness about the existence of human trafficking, a rough cut of the film was aired in Conference Room B on the second floor of the SRSC at 7:30 p.m.

The conference room was opened for seating at 7 p.m. Viewers were offered free refreshments upon arrival including bags of popcorn and a choice in drink of water or juice. The viewing audience, upon being seated, were greeted by a countdown timer claiming that the film would start in roughly 30 minutes, all while displaying facts about human trafficking.

Once the countdown expired, the audience was welcomed by two of the filmmakers, Nathan Cole and Matthew Armstrong, who expressed their gratitude for the viewers that showed up and urged the audience to assist against the human trafficking of girls in any way possible. After thanking the crowd, the technical crew started the film at about 7:30 PM.

            The film is a documentary of four students of Texas A&M University-Commerce that had been recently enlightened about human trafficking. Upon being made aware of its existence and impact, they claim to have been inspired to help abolish modern day slavery. The film is a rough cut of what they hope to make into a feature length and theatrically shown production, documenting their work with human rights organizations in India and Houston to free girls sold into sexual slavery.

            The film lasted approximately an hour in length and was well received by several members of the audience.

            "It was a very intense and powerful movie," audience member Val Curry said. "When the team travelled to India, I thought it really spoke."

            In addition to the praise given towards the film's emotional intensity, other audience members noted the rise in quality of the rough cut in comparison to versions of the film shown previously.

             "It's nice to see the film in one piece," A&M-Commerce student Brodie Daniels said. "It is considerably better edited than what I saw last year and is really compelling stuff."

            Following the screening of "Worth Fighting For," an after-party was held in the Traditions Room of the SRSC from 8:30 – 10:00 p.m. The organization had laptops at the front of the door so that all attendees could leave their e-mail addresses to maintain contact with Rescue The Girl. The after-party offered free refreshments to its patrons, as well as free Rescue The Girl merchandise including bracelets, bumper stickers and t-shirts. In addition, the party also had live musical entertainment, a question and answer session with Cole and Armstrong for the film and a live collaborative art piece being done in the center of the room by Artists for Abolition.

            Cole was pleased with the overall turnout for the event and hopes to accomplish even more next year.

"I think that the turnout has been good given what little promo we were able to do," he said. "This venue is also a lot tighter so it will also give us an opportunity to have more interaction with people."