Amnesty International, an international human rights group, meets Thursdays at 8 p.m. in McNeil 107, to raise awareness on campus about global issues.

“People lose sight of what is going on in the world,” junior Bailey Harris, president of Simpson’s Amnesty International chapter said. “People all over the world need help.”

Amnesty International is not new to Simpson’s campus.

“Amnesty International has a long history at Simpson, since the late 1980s,” said professor of management Marilyn Mueller. “When I was a new faculty member, a student and I started it here on campus.”

Interest dropped off over the last few years but has recently picked back up.

“If we shed light on these cases we will help those people who are helpless,” Mueller said. “I was extremely happy when Bailey and Jasmine [Crosser] showed interest.”

Amnesty International is a global organization that collects information about potential infringements of human rights.

“The way that Amnesty International works is by investigators and the community collecting information about people who have been disappeared, murdered or tortured,” Mueller said. “Then they get it to Amnesty who investigates it and brings the killers to justice.”

According to the Amnesty International Web site, there are currently over 150 countries and territories that the orgainization operates in.

“It truly is a global organization,” Mueller said. “The Des Moines chapter did a lot of work with Tibetan nuns who have been imprisoned by the Chinese.”

Amnesty International is currently organizing a fundraising event with the help of Public Relations Student Society of America, PRSSA and other campus organizations, .

Senior Jasmine Crosser, member of PRSSA, did not know about Amnesty International before Mueller approached PRSSA for help.

“It [Amnesty] does a lot of cool things, a lot of rallies that students can get involved with,” Crosser said.

“I’ve been working with Jasmine Crosser and other campus organizations to put on a Battle of the Bands concert to raise money for Instant Karma: Campaign to Save Darfur,” said Harris.

The concert will be held on Dec. 5 in the BSC. Admission is $10, but students will pay $5 if they show their student I.D.

“There will be five bands from different places in Iowa,” Harris said. “You will be able to donate money to whichever band, and the one with the most money at the end of the night wins.”

Amnesty International and PRSSA will also be selling shirts for $10, and each of the bands will have their own merchandise tables.

“Most of our budget went to t-shirts, so this is a really good deal for students,” Crosser said. “We had to make sure that everything was sweatshop-free, so the shirts are printed on American Apparel t-shirts.

Instant Karma is a projeect to call attention to the situation of displaced refugees in Darfur.

“We’ve been working really hard over the past three months with advertisers and bands to get things together,” said Crosser. “I hope that it goes well.”