Letters & Submissions

To The President:

Throughout the past decades, sweatshops have gone from a fragment of history to a topic we hear about in our present lives.  Sweatshops have increased throughout the United States and in many other countries.

Even Elon University is guilty of supplying goods that were made in sweatshops.  President Lambert, your students know that you can't stop the use of sweatshops, but you can help by changing the way our campus shop runs.  We need to stop selling goods that were made in sweatshops and join movements to help make a change.

After doing research, I found that Barnes and Noble is not a member of the Fair Labor Association, which means that nobody knows for sure whether they still use sweatshops because they don't let people investigate like other stores do.

The only way we will ever know if our campus shop doesn't use sweatshops is if Elon University joins the Workers' Rights Consortium (WRC).

The WRC was formed by college administrators, students and labor rights experts who are aware of the facts of the treatment of workers in sweatshops.  This organization makes sure that companies producing goods for university stores are enforcing the Codes of Conduct in sweatshops. Through this organization, we need only do a little bit and it will bring about great change.

As a college involved in this organization, we will receive assessments of the conditions in factories that produce the apparel in the campus shops.  There will be indications as to whether all the factories that the universities use follow the Code of Conduct or not.

 "The WRC will work with licensees, factory managers, workers and worker advocates to eliminate violations and move the factory toward compliance."

All our school would have to do is have you write a letter saying that we want to be a part of this organization and that we will follow the requirements when we agree to join this great group of people.  We would also need to pay the yearly fee, which is $1,000, to ask licensees for a list of the names and locations of all the factories involved in producing their goods, get a manufacturing code of conduct and work toward enforcing this code with the licensees.

Elon students pay around $25,000 a year to go to this school.  With Elon bringing in all that money, isn't there a way that we can give up $1,000 of those millions of dollars to this organization?  All we would have to do is charge each student 20 cents more in tuition to make that $1,000.  After giving only one thousand dollars to the WRC, people from this organization will go to these sweatshops and make sure that the workers are getting treated fairly and that the working conditions are good.

Many universities have been taking a stand and doing something about their sweatshop situation.  Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have joined the WRC to work on the sweatshop problem.  If local schools are stepping up and getting involved in organizations to help sweatshops, why can't we do the same?

In our classes throughout the year, we have been educated on the treatment people receive in sweatshops and that the majority of our clothes come from these shops.  Upon hearing this information, many students and faculty around campus have wanted to do something about this issue, but our school isn't backing us up. All you have to do is put forth the effort to listen to us and use your power to help bring about change.

By joining the WRC, we could change the treatment of workers in sweatshops everywhere.  I hope that I have had some impact on your decision and that you will do something about this issue soon.

-Molly A Boyce '09