Concerned students and faculty met in the Clark Honors College Lounge on Monday afternoon to open an avenue of discussion with faculty members about the Worker Rights Consortium.
“This is part of a long-term conversation that is taking place between faculty members and concerned students,” said Professor David Frank, chairman of the Faculty Advisory Council and professor of rhetoric and communication in the Honors College.
The meeting, which was only an informal discussion, was held to begin and establish a line of communication between faculty and students that will continue throughout the next year.
Human Rights Alliance member Agatha Schmaedick said the meeting’s main goal was to further engage faculty in the WRC issue.
“We just want to make sure that we’ve gone through every channel” to provide information about the WRC, she said.
The meeting also aimed to brainstorm ideas of how to deal with the issue now and how to proceed with it in the future.
“We are trying to create a consistent response and a visionary outlook on what we might do to bridge the differences of opinion,” Frank said.
Just less than a month ago, the University signed onto the WRC, which is an organization that monitors working conditions in international factories. Ever since then, problems have arisen regarding the recent pledge to membership, including Nike CEO Phil Knight’s decision to pull his personal contributions from the University.
Frank said that the students and faculty hope to work together to resolve those problems.
“I’m hopeful that we will be able to make decisions that are consistent with our values,” Frank said.
Those values include the presence of a reasoned dialogue and the conduction of careful research upon which decisions will be made.
Discussion during the meeting was also done with the aim of “clarifying misinformation and finding out what the process is going to be like next year,” Schmaedick said.
One piece of misinformation that was corrected regarded the cost of membership in the WRC.
Rumors have circulated that the price tag is $50,000 per year, which Schmaedick said is simply not true. In reality, she said the cost of being a member is much less: $3,000 a year.
“We have a number of people of good will who are well-informed and who are attempting to do the right thing,” Frank concluded.