Two weeks ago, I blogged about an anti-sweatshop demonstration at the University of Southern California, where I'm teaching for a year as part of a Fulbright Chair. The students were seeking a meeting with USC President Sample.
They've been trying to meet with the President for eight years.
They still haven't met with him.
The students come from a group called SCALE, a campus organization that is part of a larger movement called the Worker Rights Consortium. They are pushing USC to adopt a code of conduct and a "Designated Supplier Program, both aimed at eliminating the use of sweatshop labor in licensed USC merchandise (USC overflows with garments and tchotchkes emblazoned with the university logo, mascot, sports team, etc).
One group of SCALE protestors held up banners and picketed outside the building housing the President's office. A smaller group (initially 14, later 13) actually occupied the President's office, sitting in and refusing to leave when asked.
The issue of labor conditions in USC's merchandise program is a complex one. USC is a member of something called The Fair Labor Association, which welcomes representatives from manufacturing concerns, such as Nike, on its board of directors. It, too, has a code of conduct, which is substantively similar to the one offered by the Worker Rights Consortium. The biggest difference between the two organizations is in how they approach enforcement: the FLA enforces its policies through inspections. The WRC uses unions — the Designated Supplier Program requires members to buy from union shops. The theory is that inspectors keep factories honest and humane only at inspection time, while unions safeguard workers for the duration.
However, Liz Kennedy, USC's Licensing Director, says that the Preferred Suppliers Program doesn't confront the reality of manufacturing, requiring that manufacturers do the primary sewing and the logoing at the same time. Many suppliers buy generic pre-made garments and add logos later.
Both sides make good points, but the university administration also says some genuinely silly things — for example, both university spokesman James Grant and Vice President Michael Jackson suggested that it was impossible for SCALE to have been requesting a meeting with the President for eight years, since the membership of the organization rotates as students graduate, and none of the students in the group today were enrolled eight years ago. SCALE, one supposes, is reborn every term, a new organization.
If this is so, then the same thing must be true of other campus organizations — for example, the football team, the Trojans, doesn't have the same students playing on it today as were playing on it in 1999. All those trophies that "the Trojans" won were therefore in fact won by other teams, playing in a separate, distinct slice of time-space, unrelated to the present team.
Another canard I heard from Ms Kennedy was that the university had unresolved questions about the anti-trust implications of the Designated Supplier Program. Perhaps if the US had any kind of antitrust enforcement (a country where a single company controls 95 percent of the operating system market, where five companies control 90 percent of the movies, and where four companies control 90 percent of the music — the latter groups routinely acting in concert!) there would be some point in bringing this up. But given that the administration admitted that it hadn't even asked the law professors on campus who specialize in antitrust whether there's an issue here, the question looks like plain stonewalling.
That said, I found that the administrators were genuinely interested in keeping USC sweat-free. Liz Kennedy served on the board of the Fair Labor Association until last February, for example (of course, SCALE activists say that she is therefore predisposed in favor of the FLA's policies over the WRC agreements they're agitating for). Kennedy is well-informed, reasonable, and has a well-thought-through position on the issues.
But the students have had their fill of meeting with Ms Kennedy. They feel like they've reached an impasse with her, and want to plead their case directly to the President. They seem to have bargained in good faith, and at great length.
It seems reasonable for a student organization to want to meet with the university's president. And it seems reasonable that any president, no matter how busy, should be able to find time in his calendar to meet with a student group, at some point over the course of eight long years.
The students who sat in at the president's office were clearly at the end of their tethers. They tried to go through channels to get on his calendar and failed. So they just showed up.
In an ideal universe, the response to this sit-in would be to put them on the president's calendar, or schedule a public meeting to debate the issue.
Instead, the students were tricked, cajoled and ultimately threatened with suspension until they vacated the president's office. One student described how she was tricked by a campus security guard who told her she could use the toilet down the hall, then locked her out of the building. The LA Times reported that students' parents were called by the administration, and that they were ultimately handed individualized packages telling them that they faced immediate suspension if they didn't go within 15 minutes. The packages informed students in residence that their suspension would terminate their residency, rendering them homeless, and informed students on the verge of graduating that they risked losing their diplomas if they didn't comply.
Vice President Jackson explained the packages in a different light, saying that he felt that the students who'd come prepared to be suspended didn't realize that a USC suspension had many consequences, and that he just wanted to make sure they knew that they were in for. He also regretted telling students that they couldn't take the packages with them when they left, saying it was a mistake (he relented on this point with some students).
However, even if Jackson had the best of intentions, it doesn't change the fact that the students have a reasonable demand: to speak with the university president, in a timely fashion, about an issue that they have been unable to resolve with his designated official.
I've called President Sample several times over the course of the past two weeks, seeking comment on this story, and haven't had any of my calls returned.
Classes end this week.
And next semester, I suppose that the SCALE students will go back to seeking an audience with their president. I hope they get it.
Link to my pictures from the demonstration,
Link to my videos from the demonstration
Update: Brendan sez, "About three weeks ago at the University of Michigan there was an anti-sweatshop protest where we had kids stage a sit-in in the president's office. 12 were arrested."
