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By Sara Marcus and Mark Graham
The College's Memorandum of Understanding
JUNE 17, 1999--Five hopeful and excited students walked into Oberlin College President Nancy Dye's office May 4. Meeting with the president was the culmination of two years of work researching and writing new labor-friendly college-purchasing guidelines.
"We felt that we had all of our ducks in a row, because we had talked about the policy with everyone involved at the College," says Katherine Blauvelt, a sophomore from St. Cloud, Minnesota, who was in the meeting. "We hoped that the meeting with the president would go well."
The activist effort began in fall 1997 when students concerned about the labor practices of College vendors created the Student Labor Action Coalition's sweatshops group. While meeting with administrators to learn the College's purchasing procedures, they built a public-awareness campaign around Nike and Guess?, whose factories have been reported to mistreat workers.
Moved by reports of labor abuses at Nike factories abroad, the SLAC sweatshops group wrote and lobbied a proposal recommending that the College stop buying Nike products in spring 1998. Instead of continuing to meet with College staff in the fall, they chose to write a more comprehensive policy of ethical purchasing.
"The Nike proposal was short term, not long term," says Brendan Cooney, a junior from Brookville, Indiana. "This proposal is long-term."
So began the process of writing an antisweatshop policy. Oberlin's policy differs from policies at large universities because unlike them, Oberlin does not have an exclusive contract with a single company, such as Nike or Reebok. Oberlin, like many small colleges, purchases apparel on a case-by-case basis, making it easier for the College to stop buying from companies that are found guilty of unfair labor practices.
But Oberlin's policy is also more complex, because the College needs a mechanism to look into companies' labor practices. Recognizing the need, Oberlin activists invented a committee with a 10-hour-a-week student-intern who will research corporations' labor practices and report back to the committee. With members from the faculty, administration, Co-op Bookstore, and student body, the committee will make recommendations to the director of purchasing.
Oberlin activists found help drafting the policy from students at other schools. A recent national antisweatshop movement, led by United Students against Sweatshops, has been particularly strong on college and university campuses. Antisweatshop activists at schools around the country have met with administrators, held rallies, and occupied campus buildings to stop their schools' support of garment companies that use sweatshop labor.
Oberlin's group maintained contact with antisweatshop activists at other schools through an E-mail list with hundreds of members. "We got a lot of useful feedback from the listserv while we were writing the policy," says Katharine Cristiani, a junior from St. Louis, Missouri, who has been a leader in the antisweatshop campaign since it began in the fall of 1997.
When SLAC finished writing the policy last February, the only thing left was to make it official. For two months, students discussed the policy's implications with administrators.
"We've had a pretty good reception from the administration," says Ursula Lawrence, a senior from Madison, Wisconsin and co-chair of SLAC. "Every person we met told us three other people we had to meet with."
Despite the length of the process, it was relatively painless--a fact that surprised the students. Then, on May 4, Lawrence, Cristiani, Blauvelt, Cooney, Corrina Steward, a senior from Bernardston, Massachusetts, went to pitch the policy to President Dye.
"We gave the proposal to Nancy Dye, and she said, 'Where've you been?'" laughs Cristiani. "She told us she's been very concerned about sweatshops, because she's done scholarship on women in the garment industry, and she said she had been feeling sad that nobody had come to her about it earlier."
"It was surprising," Lawrence says. "Everyone had told us it would take a couple of days for Nancy Dye to approve it, but she just said, 'Do you want me to go sign this right now?' We said, 'Does that make it policy?' and she said, 'I guess so.' And that was it!"
"I was amazed," says Cristiani. "There was a feeling of shock that after two years of working on this nonstop, all of a sudden it was over. It was awesome."
"This is another historic Oberlin first," says Ursula Lawrence, a junior from Madison, Wisconsin.
"People have been emailing us left and right, asking us how we did it, requesting hard copies of our policy," Cristiani says. She says the unique parts of Oberlin's policy that tailored it to a small colleges will influence students at other schools who are still writing codes or trying to get their administrations to approve new policies.
"Our policy is important because it's part of a larger movement," Lawrence says. "Alone, we won't change Nike or Reebok. It's the movement as a whole that's going to make the changes, not one school."
Please send comments, questions, and suggestions about Oberlin Online news and feature articles to Linda.Grashoff@oberlin.edu.
