Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 22:03:50 -0700
From: CyberBrook <•••@••.•••>
Subject: Student Activism Is Back
Wednesday, May 24, 2000 in the Miami Herald
Student Activism Is Back
by Peter Dreier and Frances Fox Piven
If you're going to a graduation this season, you will see
more than caps and gowns. You will
see placards, too. Student activism is back.
Forty years after black and white college students
organized the lunch-counter sit-ins that
helped jump start the civil-rights movement, another
generation of student activists is
mobilizing to challenge widening economic inequalities at
home and abroad.
In the last three months alone, students at Johns Hopkins,
Tulane, Yale, Purdue,
Macalaster, Wesleyan, Harvard, Pomona and the universities
of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,
Michigan, Oregon, Arizona and Iowa have launched hunger
strikes and engaged in civil
disobedience.
They demand living wages for the university employees who
serve their food and clean their
dorms. And they demand decent pay and working conditions
for the Third World workers
who make their college T-shirts and sweatshirts.
The $2.5 billion collegiate licensing industry has
galvanized much of this activism. Major
companies such as Nike, Gear and Champion pay universities
sizable royalties for the right
to use the campus logo on caps, sweatshirts, uniforms and
other items. The companies
typically contract with clothing factories in Mexico,
Central America and Asia. Many use
child labor, pay below-subsistence wages and discriminate
against women.
They often keep workers in line with intimidation and
violence. Two years ago, campus
groups formed United Students Against Sweatshops to
protest these practices. The group
now has chapters at almost 200 colleges. And university
administrators are responding.
Last year more than 200 campuses adopted codes of conduct
that the apparel companies
must follow. The codes require companies to pay their
workers a living wage (adjusted for
local living costs), to disclose the names and address of
all the factories that produce the
goods and to allow colleges to verify compliance.
The big remaining problem is verification. Student
activists insist on finding an effective
monitoring system before clothing is granted a ``no
sweat'' seal of approval. The apparel
companies wanted universities to join the Fair Labor
Association, an industry-sponsored
self-policing system.
But the students are demanding that their universities
join the Workers Rights Consortium
instead, because this organization relies on human-rights
groups to monitor the factories.
The strategy already has struck a nerve at Nike, the
largest collegiate licensing firm. After
the University of Oregon joined the Workers Rights
Consortium in response to student
pressure, Phil Knight, CEO of the Oregon-based firm,
withdrew a $30 million gift to renovate
his alma mater's athletic stadium.
According to The Detroit News, Nike also broke off
negotiations with the University of
Michigan for a gift of $22 million to $26 million after
that school joined the consortium.
But students are acting locally as well as globally. They
are protesting working conditions
on their own campuses. At the University of Illinois and
the State University of New York at
Albany, demonstrators focused on the right of graduate
students -- who now do much of the
teaching at universities -- to unionize.
At the University of Michigan, students demonstrated
against racial biases in hiring and
teaching practices. Student protesters at Wesleyan,
Harvard and Pomona called for their
institutions to pay janitors, food-service workers and
other employees a living wage.
Campus activists have earned an A in citizenship. Their
activism gives them the experience
that they can carry with them into future work with unions
and in community, environmental,
human-rights and public-interest movements.
At a time when the press and the pundits lament the apathy
of the American public, these
students are acting with hope and optimism on America's
democratic promise. They are a
force for change that this country sorely needs.
Peter Dreier is professor of politics and director of the
public-policy program at Occidental
College in Los Angeles. Frances Fox Piven is professor of
political science at the City
University of New York Graduate Center.
©2000 Knight Ridder/Tribune
