An expanded committee of students and administrators will begin work next term on a recommendation to the University Senate regarding the school’s future with the Worker Rights Consortium.
But during the ad hoc committee’s preliminary meetings, which began earlier this month, members had to decide how much influence their group has and whether the group should continue meeting.
The group has until March 21 to prepare a report to the University Senate Executive Committee, which will make a final recommendation to the senate. The senate will vote, and that recommendation will be sent to University President Dave Frohnmayer, who actually has the power to decide which labor-monitoring groups the University joins and the length of membership contracts.
“It’s a rather cumbersome set of processes,” said Jim Earl, University Senate president. Earl also sits on the Senate Ad Hoc Committee on Trademark Licensing as an non-voting adviser.
The process is similar to last year when Frohnmayer made his original decision to join the WRC after the Licensing Code of Conduct Committee and the University Senate recommend membership.
This year’s ad hoc committee has a similar goal: To determine whether labor-monitoring organizations such as the WRC and the Fair Labor Association meet the criteria in the University’s Licensing Code of Conduct. But Earl also asked the committee to specifically examine the public response from the decision to join the WRC.
After the University joined the WRC, Nike CEO Phil Knight withdrew his monetary contributions to the University, including a $30 million donation intended to help renovate Autzen Stadium. In September, Frohnmayer announced the University’s membership in the FLA, a group Knight supports and that has apparel industry representation on its board.
“The University’s decision to join the WRC and Phil Knight’s public response caused a very heated debate,” Earl wrote in the committee’s mission statement. “Many people are obviously very angry. But different people are angry about different things.”
The committee began meeting last spring, but was comprised of only three administrators. The group has now expanded to seven administrators and four students.
ASUO University Affairs Coordinator Chad Sullivan is one of the four students on the committee, and was highly involved in April’s student protest to join the WRC. He said the protesters who spent 10 days and nights outside Johnson Hall last April also wanted to see more people and groups have a voice in campus government.
Currently, only Frohnmayer has the power to make decisions, and groups such as the ad hoc committee can only make recommendations.
“It’s as best as we’re going to get right now,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan added that, at the committee’s first meeting, members discussed whether the group should even exist after Frohnmayer refused to pay the University dues to the WRC in October.
But he said he wanted the group to continue so students have a forum in which they can voice their opinions about the issue.
The group’s next meeting is scheduled for Nov. 29. All meetings are open to the public. Honors College Director David Frank, who also sits on the committee, said the group will begin working on three goals: Becoming the main forum for licensing issues at the University, preparing the report for the executive committee and preparing a forum for debate on the issue.