Levin absent from rally, but may be listening

Activism is a term that has been thrown around Yale a lot recently—but on Tues., Mar. 29, Yale activists put the word into action as Students Against Sweatshops (SAS) marshalled a large crowd on Bienecke Plaza. The "No Sweat" Rally, which started at 12:30 p.m. and lasted approximately an hour, included speeches by undergraduate SAS members, political science professor Rogers Smith, labor activist, union organizer Lou Weeks, JE '89, and the head of the Graduate Employees and Students Organization, Rebecca Ruquist, GRD '02.

CAYTE PUSHKAREVA/YH Ari Holtzblatt, BK '00, speaks at a heated rally that brought students and professors to Woodbridge Hall.

The purpose of the rally was simple: to convince University President Levin, GRD '74, and the Administration to join the Workers' Rights Consortium (WRC), a non-profit organization started by college activists, labor unions, and other labor rights groups. The WRC "supports and verifies licensee compliance with production codes of conduct," according to its organization documents. The WRC oversees the factory condition of companies that make licensed products for colleges. Currently, Yale is a member of the Fair Labor Association (FLA), which is composed of companies such as Nike and Adidas, a number of human, civil, and labor rights groups, and 131 member universities. The WRC currently has nine member universities, including Brown, Haverford, and the University of Pennsylvania.

President Levin has contended with SAS since well before Tuesday's rally. According to rally organizer and SAS officer Saurav Sarkar, SY '00, the group took an important step last Thurs., Feb. 24, when it met with Levin after having its attempts at dialogue repeatedly rebuffed. "At the end of last semester," Sarkar said, "we had a meeting with President Levin at which he announced that he wouldn't be meeting with us [in the future]. [Director of University Licensing] Helen Kauder would be the Administration representative we talked to." However, Sarkar said that last week Levin reneged on that pledge and met with students, who formally presented their demands that Yale join the WRC.

The other organizer of the rally, Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, DC '03, described Levin as skeptical. Instead of embracing the WRC outright, or rejecting the FLA, "Levin thought that the WRC and the FLA were complimentary," Schneider-Mayerson said. "He also pointed out that the WRC had little funding." SAS countered by claiming that the WRC is going to be receiving greater funding soon, and is far more rigorous in its regulations than the FLA.

CAYTE PUSHKAREVA/YH After months of pressure by SAS, Levin may have begun to waver.

Indeed, the No Sweat rally strove to illuminate the contrasts between the WRC and FLA. "Our criticism is that the FLA gives too much power to the apparel manufacturers...they just stick a tag on clothes," Sarkar said. On the other hand, the WRC is based on "full disclosure" of sweatshop conditions, according to Schneider-Mayerson. "The most important tool is public outrage," he said. One weakness of the FLA, Sarkar said, is that the apparel companies can choose which factories to put under external monitoring, and only 15 percent of the company's factories—chosen by the companies—have to be monitored.

According to the charter of the FLA, "As part of this program, accredited independent external monitors shall conduct periodic inspections of at least 30 percent of the Participating Company's Applicable Facilities during the Initial Implementation Period." After this period, the participating companies must annually raise a minimum of "10 percent of Applicable Facilities; provided, however, that, the Asso-ciation may adjust this percentage up-ward...to a maximum of 15 percent."

The members of SAS and the organizers of the rally hope that Levin will sign up with the WRC by Mon., Mar. 27. The WRC will be holding a founding meeting, and Yale must sign up by Fri., Apr. 7 to participate. Once it has joined the WRC, Yale can remain a member of the FLA. However, Schneider-Mayerson said that "we would continue to press [Levin] to leave the FLA" if Yale joins the WRC.

Despite the energy visible at Tuesday's rally, SAS has no definite plan of action if Levin does not respond by the deadline. "I guess we really don't want to make any threats," Schneider-Mayerson said. Sarkar agreed. "Right now, the ball is in the Administration's court," he said. "If they continue to stonewall, we're going to have more events like this rally." Neither organizer mentioned any sort of sit-in protest similar to the ones at the University of Pennsylvania. However, the next step will be a showing on Tues., Mar. 28, of a film made of the protest, which SAS will invite Levin to see. They hope he will attend—during the protest outside of his office, Levin was in Florida, deaf to the chanting.

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