ON CAMPUS
KIRK SCIRTO, UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER: 3 weeks of activism, 2 weeks of nightly vigils, 1 week of fasting. 20 of us covered our mouths and bound our hands with red tape outside the administrative building . . . We're camping out on the academic quad tomorrow night, and we're building a model sweatshop shanty town and sewing a shirt for our president.
GRETCHEN LAKATOS, YALE: 30-40 people slept out last night and are sleeping out again tonight. We have erected an amazing structure that displays our demands, our arguments, and the massive student support for the WRC and opposition to the FLA. We are sleeping out each night to defend our structure, so the administration won't bulldoze it in the middle of the night. We just held a forum tonight to talk about the state of student voice on campus. At Yale we have no student power at all . . . There was talk in the air of a joint student-worker-community governing board, real student power, academic diversity, etc. . . . We have realized that we need to tear down the walls of this ivory tower.
TIM BARTLEY, UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA: On Tuesday members and supporters of Students Against Sweatshops at the University of Arizona began construction of a new College of Worker Rights. Located on the lawn of the Administration building, the college provides a visual display of the links between students, universities, and workers worldwide.
TIM BARTLEY: mailto:bartley at u.arizona.edu
WESLEYAN: On Tuesday, about 25 Wesleyan students occupied the Wesleyan admissions office. We are demanding that President Bennet sign a code of conduct ensuring that direct and indirect employees of the university receive a living wage, health and retirement benefits, and job security. Wesleyan's janitors are employed by Initial, a contracted cleaning service. The janitors recently voted to join SEIU, the service employees' union, and are now negotiating their first contract. After four rounds of negotiations, Initial still refuses to grant the workers retirement benefits, job security, or wages higher than the current level of $6.50 - $8.00 an hour. President Bennet maintains that the negotiations are not Wesleyan's business. . . . We have exhausted every legal option for communicating this message to the administration. We've held rallies, met with President Bennet, spoken with trustees, and gotten widespread support from the Wesleyan community. 1400 students, 129 faculty members, student of color groups, campus food service workers, parents, alumni, the university chaplains, and the Wesleyan Student Assembly have all signed statements in support of the janitors - and President Bennet has refused to budge. It has become clear to us that the administration feels no obligation to consider the opinions of students, faculty and workers. Our only option is to disrupt the operation of the university, forcing the administration to take our demands seriously.
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY: The Syracuse University Student Coalition on Organized Labor with the support of the Student Environmental Action Coalition and the Student Anti-Anthropocentric Reasoning Organization entered Chancellor Shaw's office today to personally deliver (one at a time) the remaining postcards that we have been collecting from hundreds of students urging the administration to sign onto the WRC.
AMBER, SWEAT-FREE ALBANY [SUNY]: We began occupying University President Karen Hitchcock's office at 8:30 am, demanding that our school adopt a strong code of conduct that we wrote and proposed to them 3 years ago and on which they have failed to act, or as an alternative, join the WRC. We also demanded that Sodexho Marriott, our food service provider, be kicked off our campus in light of a recent E.coli outbreak in one of our dining halls and also because of that corporation's atrocious anti-union labor practices, suppression of free speech, and unethical investment in the private prison industry. All 11 of us were arrested after the first four hours of our occupation, without even having spoken to President Hitchcock . . . Later that day, our administration building was stormed by angry students and community members, resulting in the arrest of 6 more students. One of our supporters was punched in the jaw by a high ranking University police officer, and another was pushed down a flight of stairs by the same officer. The campus community is outraged and we will fight back.
AMY SHELTON, UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY: At 1:30 Monday morning 12 UK students were arrested after sitting in for 7 hours in the administration building. The administration refused to compromise with the students. Our original demands were for the University of Kentucky to drop their affiliation with the Fair Labor Association and sign on to the Workers Rights Consortium. The students inside negotiated with the administration until 11:00 and made two offers 1) for the University to either drop the FLA of join the WRC 2) to set up a public forum with Dr. Wethington to discuss the possibility of joining the WRC. The administration refused to budge. Our demands were reasonable and our protest was non-violent. When the students were arrested about 100 people gathered at the exit with their arms linked, chanting. Several students were injured.
LAURA CLOSE, UNIVERSITY OF OREGON: The occupation at University of Oregon has begun. We attend a university that is securely in the pockets of Nike. Our library is named the Phil Knight Library, our new law school is named after Phil Knight's father . . . Needless to saying we are suffocating. Needless to say that our year long campaign for our administration to end its connections to sweatshop labor, and now to join the Worker Rights Consortium is met with no support from the University administration . . . So today, we began our occupation. It is a little different from other schools, in that our administration does not tolerate students sitting-in. So we sent five students in with demands, and they refused to leave the building until our president signed on. They were arrested. Tonight we commence our occupation of the administration lawn, with a community some forty people strong and growing. We will not leave until our demands are met. Tents and music abound. We are building an empowered space, a community dedicated to human rights, and shared governance.
LAURA CLOSE: mailto:lclose at gladstone.uoregon.edu STUDENTS AGAINST SWEATSHOPS http://www.umich.edu/~sole/usas