To raise awareness about sweatshop conditions in a baseball cap factory with which Penn State associates, two anti-sweatshop student groups played a lively game of wiffle ball on Friday afternoon -- inside Old Main.

The workers' rights organizations United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) and Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) held the game for two reasons: to express frustration with the administration and to celebrate a recent victory for the workers at the New Era Cap factory in Mobile, Ala., said USAS member Doug Baldwin (senior-environmental research).

Penn State has a contract with New Era, which produces baseball caps with Penn State's logo, Baldwin said.

Bill Mahon, vice president for university relations, said Friday that the wiffle ball game was "not a smart idea" because the ball hit frescoes inside the historic landmark.

"Hitting balls at valuable artwork was a bone-headed idea," Mahon said. "You don't gain fans that way."

Three weeks ago, USAS and SLAP delivered a letter to Penn State President Graham Spanier's office to stop production with New Era in what Baldwin dubbed the "New Era campaign."

The New Era campaign ended last Monday when the Mobile New Era factory rehired workers fired for trying to form a new union, Baldwin said. The factory also met the demands of Teamsters, a labor union-forming organization that was investigating the discrimination allegations, as well, Baldwin said.

The wiffle ball game celebrated the end of the New Era campaign though it also "[recognized] the fact that Penn State did not contact students," Baldwin said.

Though USAS and SLAP want Penn State to adopt the Designated Suppliers Program (DSP), a program requiring that apparel be made in worker rights-friendly factories, Mahon said the program might be illegal.

"We've kept saying this DSP might be illegal, and we were not going to act [on it]," Mahon said, adding that Penn State is against sweatshops.

"We have the same final goal," he said. "But Penn State has an obligation to students and alumni to make legal decisions."

Though Tom Poole, associate to the president for administration, attempted to stop the organizations' game, only after the groups shouted their message did they leave the lobby.

Before the wiffle ball game, USAS member Jennie Shaw (sophomore-secondary education) said the students might get in trouble.

"But that will bring attention to the issue," she said. "In order to get some sort of response out of them, we figured we had to something drastic."