News

Lang Center researchers to study ethical purchasing

In print | September 24, 2009

The Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility and the Swarthmore Labor Action Project are working together to ensure that the college stays committed to making socially and environmentally sound purchasing decisions in the aftermath of Coke’s return.

The Lang Center is hiring two research assistants to investigate ethical purchasing guidelines in place at other colleges and universities. At the end of their work, they will publish a report that aims to spark a college-wide discussion about if and how the college should develop its own ethical purchasing guidelines.

Last year, the administration met with members of the Swarthmore Kick Coke campaign, a student-run campaign to remove Coca-Cola products from campus because of the corporation’s questionable labor practices. They informed the students that they were going to allow Coke to make a bid for a contract to sell its products on campus and that if that bid was considerably cheaper than Pepsi’s, they would purchase from the Coke corporation.

While the students accepted the budgetary reasons behind Coke’s return, they did not want ethical labor issues to go unnoticed.

“The seniors [from Kick Coke] pressed the administration to create ethical purchasing guidelines,” Majandra Rodriguez ’12, a member of SLAP, said.

SLAP, an organization formed by several Kick Coke members who wanted to keep labor activism on campus, has been working with the Lang Center to make these guidelines a reality.

Students will be involved in the hiring process for the two new research assistants. “We wanted a student voice in the hiring committee,” Rodriguez said.

Students and the Lang Center alike do not want to limit the job description as it applies to ethical purchasing. The position covers a wide variety of issues concerning ethical purchasing, including concerns about labor rights, environmental sustainability, humane animal treatment and supporting local and small producers as opposed to big corporations.

“The students will be ‘exploring,’” said Joy Charlton, executive director of the Lang Center. “No one is yet sure what such guidelines might look like, what they might entail, what trade-offs will have to be considered, what parts of the college could be or not be involved, what ‘ethical’ might refer to in practical consequences.”

Solange Hilfinger-Pardo ’12, a member of both SLAP and the hiring committee, added, “We don’t want to focus on being sweatshop-free. We want a comprehensive document, including everything ‘ethical purchasing’ entails.”

The guidelines are meant to be a frame of reference for students who want to start campaigns like Kick Coke. Hilfinger-Pardo added that the guidelines “will also be useful in the face of the economic crisis for the college to know where to draw the line when it comes to buying.”

The hiring committee is looking for someone who not only has research skills but also understands how important this issue is. “It’ll help the college to maintain its reputation as socially responsible,” Hilfinger-Pardo said.

The researchers will be looking more at how other institutions followed through with their ethical purchasing guidelines then at the specifics of those guidelines. The groundwork will include web research, interviews and analysis. The report should be done by the end of fall semester.

The assistants will look at information about all types of institutions, not just ones similar to Swarthmore.

“While information from colleges [similar to] our size would be most useful, my expectation is that we will be looking for information from any institution where such information might help a subsequent, broader conversation on our campus,” Charlton said.

Many schools have established ethical purchasing policies. Oberlin College has both a Green Purchasing Policy and a Sweatshop-Free Apparel Code of Purchasing. It lists on its merchandise qualities like biodegradability, compostability and lack of carcinogens as qualities of products that are ethically desirable.

The Sweatshop-Free Apparel Code of Purchasing states: “General Pledge Against Sweatshop Goods: Whereas Oberlin College refuses to contribute to the mistreatment and exploitation of workers, the College pledges to never knowingly purchase apparel produced under sweatshop conditions at any stage of the production process. In keeping with this pledge, Oberlin College will institute mechanisms to prevent the College from contributing to apparel sweatshop production.”

Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina emphasized its heritage through the use of “Quaker values for social justice and environmental sustainability” on its website. The Guilford policy project also draws from other schools’ experiences — Brown University, Earlham College and the University of Michigan, to name a few.

Called “Ethical Purchasing and Procurement Policy,” the program started out as a Quaker Faith and Practice class project in 2006. As of 2008, Guilford had plans to establish an Ethical Purchasing Committee.

Applications are due tomorrow.