After attending a "welcome-back" party hosted by members of anti-sweatshop groups on the steps of Old Main two weeks ago, Vice President for Student Affairs Damon Sims hosted a party of his own Friday afternoon.
Sims invited members of United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) and Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) to the HUB-Robeson Center and suggested a new approach to the groups' leading concerns.
At the meeting, Sims suggested that the students form a committee at Penn State that would discuss sweatshop and apparel issues and include labor professors, student activists and administration representatives.
"Everybody seems to have drawn lines in the sand," Sims said Friday. "There's no conversation going on as far as I can tell."
The former associate vice provost for Student Affairs at Indiana University at Bloomington, Sims was a member of a similar anti-sweatshop committee at Indiana.
USAS and SLAP members dined on pizza and soda while Sims addressed what he believes to be the main issue in the groups' string of controversial dealings with the administration: a lack of communication.
USAS and SLAP have been calling for the university to adopt the Designated Suppliers Program (DSP) for at least four years.
The DSP, which has not been formally implemented, would require university apparel to be made in Worker Rights Consortium-approved facilities.
Last year, USAS and SLAP staged several protests, including a wiffle-ball game inside Old Main as well as a sit-in inside the building, which led to 31 charges of defiant criminal trespass.
At Friday's meeting, USAS and SLAP members gave an outline of their activities within the last year and said they felt the university has ignored their concerns.
"We wish [Penn State President Graham Spanier] would be more responsive," USAS member Joe Lucarelli (senior-Japanese and East Asian studies) said. "It's very disenchanting. I have yet to see him in a setting that is not a mass event or something completely frivolous, like playing the washboard at the Phyrst."
Sims said both the administration and the anti-sweatshop groups have to establish more formal lines of communication.
"There is no structure in place now, other than you marching up to the gates of Old Main and people ignoring you," Sims said. "When a university has to arrest its students for this kind of political activism, then something is amiss."
Though no formal plans were set in motion for Sims' proposed anti-sweatshop committee, Sims said he would speak with university officials about the issue. He added Spanier is "encouraging of this kind of dialogue."
USAS and SLAP members said they appreciated the meeting with Sims.
"It was what we expected; we figured it would be about creating a more secure dialogue," said USAS member Anna Brewer (sophomore-comparative literature and painting).
USAS member Chris Stevens said the meeting was a step in the right direction.
"We've been trying to create a dialogue with the university for about three years," Stevens (sophomore-sociology) said.
"Hopefully it'll be more constructive now."
