Columnist off mark
Beata Mostafavi’s column (ODE, March 9) presented a short-sighted view of today’s job market. Students are already pushed to work way too much while in school, often at the expense of their own education. This work-your-way-to-success dogma is Capitalism 101, and in the long run, it does the individual more harm than good.
I worked full time for five years before returning to graduate school, and I acknowledge that my resumé, which includes eight internships while in school, helped me land my first full-time job with a good starting salary at a large daily newspaper. But they did not help me perform better than colleagues who had invested more time in their studies. As I sought to write the kind of in-depth articles that get a young reporter promoted, I regretted that I had not devoted more time to learn the intricacies of urban issues, women’s studies and economics. A broad base of knowledge, good writing skills and the critical thinking skills to put it all together are vital to job success. These fundamental things are usually better absorbed in college than in the daily crush of the job market. These things also equip you to be active, well-informed citizens.
Of course employers like interns. Interns offer companies cheap labor and ways to reduce training costs and mold pro-company employees. There is nothing wrong with getting a little work experience while in college, but in the long run, students are best served by devoting most of their time to their studies. We’ll all spend the rest of our lives working. Now is the time to get the most of your education.

Ursula Wiljanen

Ph.D. student in comparative

literature

Let our voices be heard
For a year now, the anti-sweatshop issue has been visible all over campus. As students, we have done research, and we have educated and been educated by groups on campus. Through many different outlets, we have heard the views of our peers, Nike and the Emerald. Students heard the various viewpoints, advertisements, editorials and street theater performances. And then we voted. One thousand, two hundred thirty-seven students, three quarters of the voting student body, used their voices to show their support for the Workers’ Rights Consortium. Many of these students may not know that because of the University’s current lack of democracy, our voice is nonbinding. University President Dave Frohnmayer is the only one who has the decision-making power on this issue. In short, 1,237 students have taken a stand, and Frohnmayer has the option to disregard the vote. I urge those students to make sure their voices are not ignored.

Halle Rubin Williams

history

University should adopt WRC
Last year, a small group of college students from the United States entered the Ex Modica factory in El Salvador to ask workers about their working conditions. The students were discovered by guards who forcefully took their film and ordered them out of the factory at gunpoint. What did this factory have to hide?
According to the National Labor Committee, a U.S.-based human rights nonprofit group, the conditions in Ex Modica are horrendous and reflect patterns of exploitation they have found in apparel factories throughout the world.
In Ex Modica, the NLC reports, workers (mostly young women and children) earn 60 cents an hour, a wage that does not buy even basic staples for a small family. Indeed, the NLC has talked to women who are supplementing their children’s diets with coffee because they cannot afford food. Furthermore, workers are verbally humiliated by guards, allowed to go to the bathroom twice a day and fired if they become pregnant. Finally, and perhaps most disturbingly, according to the NLC and other human rights groups, sweatshop workers in Ex Modica and throughout the world are fired if they try to organize.
Surprise, surprise, Ex Modica produces University licensed apparel. If we adopt the Workers’ Rights Consortium (the recent vote was merely a recommendation that the administration do so), we have the opportunity to address this injustice. The WRC will create a safe atmosphere for workers to speak up when they are wronged and to organize if they so wish. The administration should sign on today.

Seth Quakenbush

senior

Frohnmayer takes HRA’s credit
If University President Dave Frohnmayer were speaking the whole truth about the Workers’ Rights Consortium in his commentary (ODE, March 29), then we would applaud his efforts of cooperation, shared-governance and community. We support working together as faculty, staff and students to address issues that affect everyone.
Frohnmayer’s statement, however, that “the ‘sweatshop’ licensing issue began with an initiative from the President’s Office” is an outright lie. The Human Rights Alliance, given a mere parenthetical clause in his letter, spurred the administration to start the Licensee Code of Conduct Committee and provided most of its research materials. This committee came about only after the HRA spent two terms meeting with administrators and faculty, holding public informational forums and working locally and nationally with student, labor and human rights groups to illuminate the importance and urgency of this issue. Is it “working together” if one group does the majority of the work and another takes all the credit?
Frohnmayer’s commentary is a political ploy to undermine the efforts of students who have been working tirelessly for more than a year to educate the University community about workers’ rights and the University’s role in sweatshop labor through companies that produce licensed apparel.
Under the guise of seeking cooperation, Frohnmayer establishes adversarial positions within the University. President Frohnmayer, if you truly support “living wages, reasonable hours of work and adequate safety and health for those workers who make University licensed products,” why are you prolonging the suffering of those workers by delaying your decision to adopt the WRC?

Agatha Schmaedick

international and environmental studies

Chad Sullivan

music and history