Dartmouth community members remember vividly the day last February when students gathered on the lawn of Psi Upsilon fraternity to protest the administration's pledge to revamp social life at the College.
Campus leaders spoke passionately about the positive contributions Greek organizations make to student life, and a receptive audience -- many clad in pro-Greek attire -- cheered them on.
But this enthusiasm has yet to translate itself into support for the anti-sweatshop movement that has swept university campuses across North America, a curious phenomenon for a student body where 75 percent of students participate in regular volunteer work. Indeed, Dartmouth is relatively unique in its failure to host a single labor rights organization.
The last six weeks have marked a wave of student anti-sweatshop protests across North America. Crucial tests for university administrations on both coasts and everywhere in-between, the protests have put colleges in the awkward position of trying to support human rights while upholding obligations made with the Fair Labor Association, a group to which Dartmouth belongs and at which the demonstrations have been aimed.
The FLA, formed two years ago by college administrations and corporations in response to student labor rights concerns, is a monitoring group that boasts a 150 school membership. Corporate, non-governmental and university representatives comprise its governing board, and the group is charged with the responsibility of certifying the factory conditions of the $2.5 billion collegiate-licensing industry.
A simple task? Not quite.
The FLA has proven controversial indeed. The Workers' Rights Consortium -- a newly founded organization -- has spearheaded student opposition to the original collegiate labor rights group, arguing that logo-bearing corporations cannot effectively monitor their own practices. Representatives of manufacturers take up six of 14 seats on the FLA's board, more than the one third necessary to veto policy proposals.
One of the principle differences between the two groups is the monitoring systems they have proposed. The FLA would require some inspection of every factory every year by either external or internal monitors, usually with advance notice.
The WRC, however, would use only local human-rights, religious or labor organizations to complete the monitoring and would conduct exclusively surprise visits.
Following the WRC's lead, protestors have tried to revoke their colleges' membership in the FLA.
Students at the University of Pennsylvania, for example, staged a nine-day sit-in of the president's office. At the University of Wisconsin, protestors chained themselves together in the administration building for four days, forced to leave only when riot police were brought in. A nine-day hunger strike chilled the Purdue University campus. And, perhaps most creatively, Toronto police employed Backsteet Boys music to "torture" students holding a six-day sit-in at the university there.
But what the FLA has countered, and what many college administrations hold as well, is that the cooperation of corporations is essential to long-term change in their labor practices.
Many also argue that the WRC's lure has been misleading, and that the consortium has failed to acknowledge the complexity of the issues involved.
"While not perfect, [the FLA] is a step in the right direction," Dartmouth's Acting Legal Counsel Sean Gorman, who participated in the FLA's founding, said. "We really haven't had any reason to pull out of the FLA" and join the WRC, he continued.
According to Dean of the College James Larimore, 90 percent of the Dartmouth logo apparel is manufactured in the United States by small companies, and but 10 percent is made by large corporations such as Nike, Champion and Russel.
"We probably don't have the same type of concern that the other colleges and universities have in where their logo apparel is manufactured," Larimore said.
Still, the absence of any student objections to the College's membership in the FLA -- and perhaps even awareness of its belonging -- speaks to broader trends. Historically, the Hanover campus has not been known for its activism in national events. Its rural location, moreover, has been cited as a cause for diminished levels of student political participation.
The shanties built on the Green to protest the College's investment in South African companies during the height of appartheid, as well as objections to military recruitment during the Vietnam era, stand in obvious contrast to this characteristic. Nonetheless, students of the more recent era have shown little organized interest in national controversies.
According to Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Karl Furstenberg, the historical and geographic factors, and not the type of students that comprise Darmouth's applicant pool, affect levels of social activism.
"I think for those students who are really interested in social activism," he added, "there are some other campuses where social activism tends to be more visible.
"I don't think there's the history and tradition of activism here, though these things are changing. And I think when students arrive here, that's a pretty evident part of the culture. And for somebody who's inclined toward it, some part of the culture may not support it," Furstenberg continued.
Though not at Dartmouth, the controversy continues to rage across campuses nationwide. The WRC held its first official meeting this weekend in New York, and now contains 44 member institutions in its ranks.
These included large consumer university systems such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana, as well as smaller schools such as Bard, Oberlin and Haverford Colleges. In the Ivy League, Brown University is now a member of both the WRC and FLA, while Harvard is considering the same option. Penn recently withdrew from the FLA.
