Students urge anti-sweatshop stance by URI

05/04/05 - A University of Rhode Island student group is seeking final approval from administrators to join an organization which bands universities together to prevent university-affiliated apparel companies from hiring manufacturers that promote sweatshop-labor conditions. "My hope is more students get involved," Katie Block, a member of URI Students for Social Change, said. "I think students want to be responsible for what they are wearing."

URISSC is attempting to finalize an agreement with administrators to become a part of the Workers Rights Consortium. According to the WRC website, http://www.workersrights.org, the WRC is a non-profit organization that was created by university administrators, students and labor rights experts to ensure that goods with university logos are not manufactured under sweatshop conditions.

Bethany Toole, a representative from the WRC and a URI graduate, has been making an effort to add URI to the WRC list since she attended the university in 2001. She said the WRC investigates factories that produce university apparel and sends reports to universities. These reports help universities increase self-initiated investigations and put pressure on certain brands that are not catering to the human-rights conditions stipulated by the WRC Code of Conduct, Toole said.

"Students are a powerful voice because they have leverage as a consumer at large," she said. "Brands listen to 50 schools."

Toole said administrators were in the final stages of affiliation before her graduation, but the process lost its momentum after she graduated. "It's been stalling for so long," she said.

"I'm not sure what happened, there was a lull," Block said.

Richard Mcintyre, a professor of economics and a supporter of the WRC, said students become very motivated to affiliate, but often graduate before administratiors come to a final agreement. He said the administration needs student input to see the process until its end.

"If this was a high-profile issue for students then they would take more interest. I don't think this is," Mcintyre said.

Block said URISSC is picking up where Toole left off and is confident the affiliation will be approved next year.

Toole said the biggest problem she ran into while she was at URI was gaining approval from administration, athletics and the URI Bookstore. She also had trouble assembling all three to finalize the process.

"People are never on the same page," McIntyre said.

Although all departments approved of the WRC, Toole said it was difficult to put the topic on the agenda. "Who wants to have a pro-sweatshop stand?" she said. "It makes schools look bad not to explore the issue."

According to the WRC, affiliated universities must agree to adopt a manufacturing code of conduct, ask licensees to provide the WRC with a list of factories that are involved in manufacturing university logo goods and pay an annual fee - which is one percent of gross licensing revenues. The WRC currently has 136 affiliate schools.

"This has never increased the cost of clothing," Toole said.

Block said she is waiting to hear from athletics. "There needs to be more communication," she said.

Toole said URI and the University of Vermont are the only state universities in New England that are not in the WRC.

"I hope people start raising hell if the issue doesn't go through," Block said.