Students Can Force Change Through Their Dollars

Note: My name is Adam Waxman. I'm Ben's twin brother and a senior at Guilford College in Greensboro, NC. I've written a couple of different things here and there, and Ben's asked me to help out with the blog by posting occasionally. If you want to send me feedback, my email is adam.waxman@gmail.com.

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A few years ago, radical singer-songwriter David Rovics came to my campus to and did a little concert. In his set, he played a song called "Drink of the Deathsquads," which is basically a polemic assailing the Coca-Cola Company for their, how shall we say this, labor issues in Colombia.

Before he broke into song, Rovics related a little story about how he had visited another campus (I think it was Warren Wilson, but don't quote me on that) with a union activist from Colombia a few weeks before. The night after the concert, the administration at WW awoke to find all of the Coke machines on campus inoperable, their coin slots gummed up with hot glue.

Everyone at the Guilford concert got a good chuckle out of this. Where this goes, obviously, is that the next day, students on our campus awoke to find all of the Coke machines vandalized. A fair number of students were pretty upset, including some of us in the progressive community who don't view this kind of activity as politically helpful or genuinely effective. And it extends beyond just soda machines to larger issues on campus. The question becomes, how can students be sure that they are not forced to support companies whose business practices they find morally questionable?

Thankfully, students across the country (and indeed the world) are using a new way to ensure that their dollars go to support companies that provide decent working conditions, respect the environment, and provide quality products. Students from the University of Michigian to Rutgers in New Jersey have begun to adopt resolutions encouraging the boycott of Coke products.

These kinds of resolutions could have a tremendous effect on the way companies do business - my own small Guilford College, for example, leverages about $85 million in buying power each year. Larger universities with strict rules about ethical purchasing can really force companies to take notice.

Probably the best example of this kind of buying power can be seen in the Workers Rights Consortium, a nationwide network of close to 160 campuses dedicated to ensuring that school apparel is produced in humane conditions. The WRC provides research on factories worldwide to campuses who then make decisions about which suppliers to use. Already, the WRC has helped leverage billions of dollars across on industry to force a betterment of working conditions.

The WRC represents a good model for other important products that carry an ethical dimension. Progressive students, faculty, and staff at schools across the country can develop ethical guidelines for purchasing that can have a real impact on the social conscience of companies eager to do business.