Twin Cities Students Tackle Tough Topic With Creativity

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Some Twin Cities students are taking a creative approach to a serious issue.

"Complete strangers are retweeting my tweet which is really cool to see," Breck senior Luci McGlynn said.

The tweets address a topic that's difficult for girls their age to talk about—sex trafficking. It's an issue that ramps up ahead of another Super Bowl.

Murphy, who was part of the Women's Foundation of Minnesota, was asked to work with the anti-trafficking committee within the Super Bowl Host Committee.

"They challenged me to make a Twitter campaign so that my friends could raise awareness about sex trafficking," Breck School senior Julia Murphy said.

Murphy, who plays for the girls varsity hockey team, recruited her friends and teammates for ideas. They pitched a video involving the Breck girls swim team.

"They brought a water proof football into the swimming pool and threw it from one girl to the other," she said of the idea.

The relay-style video ends with the girls shouting "Minnesota girls are not for sale."

"I was kind of nervous but I knew that we were doing something good," McGlynn said.

The committee loved it. Since then similar videos have been made by girls hockey, boys basketball, and the Nordic skiers, posted one month before Super Bowl 52.  The goal is to get other schools in the state to make their own videos to educate young women and men.

"I think it's really important because if you can educate people about it then there's more and more solutions to the problem," McGlynn said.

More than 500 people were arrested nationally during last year's Super Bowl for sex trafficking crimes.

In:
• Sex Trafficking