Sweatshop issue evokes little U. student reaction

While students at other schools staged protests, Penn has seen limited activity on the issue. While protests, sit-ins and rallies have recently punctuated campus life at several Ivy League universities, it's been mostly business as usual at Penn. Many students at other Ivy institutions have spent at least part of the past week publicly condemning the use of sweatshops to produce official school-logo apparel. But at Penn, the issue has garnered little attention among students and has generated little public activity from administrators. No rallies have been held on campus and while officials said they plan on developing Penn's sweatshop policy in close contact with other schools, the University did not attend a conference in New York City last week where the other seven Ivies discussed possible guidelines to prevent university-licensed apparel from being produced at sweatshops. Still, several students say they're not surprised by the lack of general involvement. "We're not what you would call an activist student body," College sophomore Richard Lataille said. And Michael Lau, a Wharton freshman, said he's noticed that Penn students tend to be "much more indifferent and complacent about things." The last major student protest at Penn was in response to Chinese President Jiang Zemin's visit to campus in the fall of 1997. Around 80 students gathered near the University Museum at 33rd and Spruce streets for an Amnesty International-led protest. However, when Zemin visited Harvard University during the same trip, around 4,000 demonstrators protested his arrival at the Cambridge, Mass., school. With regard to sweatshops, the only evidence of activism on campus these days is a plan by the Progressive Activist Network to form a subcommittee that would address the issue. College junior Miriam Joffe-Block, a member of PAN, said the subcommittee is open to all Penn students and will deal specifically with the sweatshop controversy. Joffe-Block said she first heard about the sweatshop issue from a student at Cornell University. She credited students at other Ivy League universities for showing "incredible initiative." Though action was taken at other schools through rallies and protests which elicited national attention and effected change, Joffe-Block said "it's best if [Penn] can resolve things at a meeting-type organizational level." She explained that she'd ultimately like to see students and administrators working in a "collaborative effort" to develop a code of conduct for factories that produce goods with collegiate logos. She also said she has been told there is a group of administrators working on the issue. Meanwhile, students at other schools have recently challenged their administration and made tangible progress. Following a rally of about 300 Princeton students -- where sweatshop working conditions and student responsibilities were discussed -- the administration agreed this weekend to publicly release a list of every manufacturing site around the world that produces official Princeton clothing. But according to Penn College senior Michelle Weinberg, mobilizing a large number of Penn students for such a cause is not an easy task. According to Weinberg, who is head of the Penn Environmental Group and a Daily Pennsylvanian columnist, there is only a "very small group of people [at Penn] who are motivated enough to do activist" activities. Joffe-Block, however, said that Penn students are not apathetic -- just traditionally politically inactive. "Penn is labeled as apathetic but the truth is we have a lot of students who are engaged and active in organizations, but not many of them are political," said Joffe-Block. According to Undergraduate Assembly Chairperson Bill Conway, a Wharton junior, the UA currently has no specific plans to address the issue, but he said he does consider the matter worthy of the UA's attention. "If members of the UA feel that this is an important issue to undergraduates, then yes, it is our responsibility," Conway added.

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