United Students Against Sweatshops

Above and beyond the pressure it's bringing to bear on university administrators and corporations, the anti-sweatshop movement on university campuses is instructive for at least three reasons.

First, because it fully dispels the myth of Generation-Xers-as-apathetic-slackers. There is a great deal of sophisticated campus activism these days; and, perhaps more importantly, there is a significant element of student participation in solidarity with labor and environmental activists, for example, in the WTO protests in Seattle.

Second, because it demonstrates, once again, how limited and class-conscious the mainstream media are these days. You simply cannot find any decent, regular coverage of the flood of activism on university campuses. This lack of coverage borders on criminality. The bargain we made with corporations when we gave them the public airwaves is that programming would focus on the public interest. That hasn't happened, and it not happening, in my view, invalidates the social contract we had with these corporations. Remember: corporate charter revocation is within the sovereign's power, and we're the sovereign, at least for a little while longer

Third, because it demonstrates the growing commercialization and corporatization of American universities. It's happening across the board, not just with the licensing of university logos, mascots and trademarks. One example from my university: Bell & Howell's UMI, the archiver-of-record of American dissertations and theses is playing hardball, offering free access -- access that always should have been free -- to dissertations and theses in exchange for exclusive distribution rights over future dissertations and theses, a move that strikes at the heart of what a university is. Universities acquiescent enough to agree with this devil's bargain will in effect be abdicating their unique mission as a community dedicated to the production and dissemination of knowledge.

Sweatshop labor is unacceptable, as is the commercialization and corporatization of the American university. We all owe a huge debt to students for helping the rest of us remember that. American corporations ("American" in name only these days) have no right to exploit the poor and wretched of the earth just to further enrich the greedy few. And they certainly have no right to make American universities a partner in their damnable, dirty games.