Once informed of the statement by e-mail, several members of the committee denied the charges and questioned the group's finger-pointing.
Dan Sieminski, chair of the advisory committee and assistant vice president for finance and business, said he was "becoming a little weary" of the unofficial student group and one of its founding members, Justin Leto.
"To be honest, I'm not sure what the point of all these accusations are," Sieminski said.
Dennis Gouran, committee member and professor of speech communication and labor studies and industrial relations, called STAR's characterization of the committee "grossly inaccurate and unfair to the members."
On April 17, Penn State President Graham Spanier announced the creation of the advisory committee, after members of STAR occupied a swath of the Old Main lawn for almost three weeks in a push for Penn State to consider affiliating with the WRC.
In the recent campaign to rid overseas apparel factories of sweatshop conditions, the Worker Rights Consortium rose two years ago to challenge tactics already proposed by the Fair Labor Association.
Founders of the consortium united behind fears that the FLA would be too influenced by corporate control to be effective.
But the proponents of the association, which grew out of a 1996 White House partnership, say the new consortium is not as well established and doesn't have an actual mechanism to remedy sweatshop conditions once they come to light.
At Penn State, Spanier agreed to include administrators, faculty, and students in the committee formed to outline the principles Penn State wants to require from its apparel contractors and which monitoring organizations would foot that bill.
Recent graduate Garrett Fitzgerald, who was Undergraduate Student Government president at the time of the STAR protest, said he was asked to submit a short list of students he thought would be well suited for the advisory committee.
But the undergraduates who were chosen were not the ones he suggested.
"I'm quite sure that the top four were not taken," Fitzgerald said in an e-mail sent yesterday. "It was a signal that now sticks out like a sore thumb."
Fitzgerald voiced similar disappointment about the student committee picks in an e-mail message he sent to Sieminski April 21, which was among more than a dozen attachments in STAR's Tuesday release.
This e-mail evidence supposedly supports the various claims STAR makes throughout the statement, including ways in which the WRC was ignored or disadvantaged in the deliberations.
"All we asked for was an unbiased review of the two sweatshop monitoring organizations with students appointed as student leaders, and what we got was a committee that was tampered with," Leto said.
One of the advisory committee undergraduate members who was associated with STAR during the protest campout also said she felt that the deliberations were biased, and chose to resign a day before the December report was released.
While not directly involved with STAR's latest accusations, Samantha Chirillo echoed the tone of the charges.
"Sieminski always gave us his pro-FLA biased opinion on everything even before the committee members had the chance to read the material," Chirillo said. "We had very little information on globalization, which, together with the living wage, are crucial to understanding the importance of the WRC."
Gouran disagreed with Chirillo and STAR's allegations.
"I have no idea on what evidential grounds those representing [STAR] reached the conclusion that the work . . . was 'rigged' to produce a predetermined outcome," Gouran said.
"The fact is the committee's recommendations to the president, after six months of interviewing, examining documents, and discussion, came down to a determination of which of two extant organizations . . . has the best prospects at this point in time for addressing the problems of the workers."
Phillip Bower (graduate-mineral processing) concurred with his fellow committee member, insisting that the process was fair and agreements were based on consensus.
"Committee members were free to decide whatever they wanted and could speak freely at the meetings," Bower said.
Despite the potential opposition, Leto said he is planning to present STAR's findings at an upcoming Faculty Senate meeting.
Sieminski said the accusations, many of which are directed at his own actions in the process, will not compel him to forget about the focus of Penn State's efforts to end sweatshop conditions in its factories.
"It's fascinating how STAR is now more concerned with Dan Sieminski than the factory workers," he said. "I assure you that I will not be losing my focus."
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