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Swarthmore Student Council Supports Coca-Cola Campaign
Martha Marrazza
The Phoenix
October 6, 2005
Student Council members recently passed a resolution supporting the
student-run Kick Coke campaign. The resolution backs the group’s efforts
to decrease the consumption of Coca-Cola on campus, and it also stipulates
that President Al Bloom will write to Coca-Cola executives expressing
Swarthmore’s disapproval of reported human rights violations by the
corporation.
The resolution represents a victory for the campaign, whose members
have been trying to alert Swarthmore students to the charges of human
rights abuses levied against Coke factories in India and Colombia.
While the Kick Coke campaign has existed at the international level
for some time, Swarthmore students have begun to rally behind the
cause over the past year.
Sarah Roberts ’08 was moved to work on Swarthmore’s Kick Coke campaign
after learning about some of the company’s policies. “I went to a
conference in Austin, Texas, and some union leaders from Colombia
spoke at it. They talked about the murders and kidnappings that were
occurring, as well as the intimidation present at Coke factories,”
Roberts said. “There were also some water rights issues in India.
I think it’s important to use our money for social justice, not to
do bad things in the world.”
Ruth Schultz ’09’s disgust with Coca-Cola executives for alleged human
rights violations has motivated her to participate in the campaign.
“In Colombia, over the past 13 years or so, there have been nine murders
of labor leaders, and there have also been various threats against
them. One person was even killed in a Coke plant in broad daylight,”
she said. “It’s expected that Coke is connected with this, since they
most likely contract paramilitary groups to quell labor unions. If
a worker gets killed in their factory, that’s horrible, if they were
planning it or if they weren’t.”
Students involved in the Kick Coke campaign have attempted to spread
their message through events like Coke-Free Fridays. “We hope to establish
a greater presence on campus through Coke-Free Fridays,” Roberts said.
“It’s a good way to make people think about the issue.”
Members of the Kick Coke campaign ultimately want to terminate Swarthmore’s
contract with Coca-Cola, but they determined that securing a student
council resolution first would bring about immediate change. “On campus,
we’re focusing on getting the administration to send a letter to Coke
warning that they will cut their contract because of what we have
learned about their human rights abuses,” Roberts said. “Last week
the Student Council passed a resolution and now they will work with
the administration to send a letter. [A resolution] just shows that
this is something students are thinking about on campus. If the school
says they’ll cut their contract with Coke, that makes a big difference.”
Roberts hopes Coke will reconsider its policies if colleges threaten
to sever contracts with the company. “Our end goal is sending a letter
of concern to Coke, saying that we won’t renew our contract when it
expires,” she said. “It’s not effective to have a big campaign saying
that we’re not going to drink soda or other drinks made by bad companies.
They only way to make a real change is to target one company and go
with it.”
The newly-passed student council resolution appeals to President Al
Bloom to write a letter to Coke communicating Swarthmore’s concerns
about company policy. Stuart Hain, Associate Vice President for Facilities
and Services, said the president’s office will send an admonishing
letter to Coke and monitor investigations that the company promised
to conduct in response to the charges of human rights violations.
Hain worked with students from the Kick Coke campaign to discuss the
future of the soda as a major vendor at Swarthmore. “We had a meeting,
and I’ve taken the issues presented to members of the president’s
staff to talk about it. The college has done a couple of things. We
went to a Coke stockholders meeting and asked for an investigation
in response to the charges,” Hain said.
Kick Coke members have chosen to target Coke, rather than other large
soda vendors, in hopes that other corporations will learn from the
example of the public backlash against Coke’s policies. “The reason
we don’t go after Pepsi is not because they have a shimmering record,
it’s just that they’re not guilty to the extent of Coke,” Herschel
Pecker ’06 said. “You go after the biggest company. In the vein of
the people who boycotted Nike, you pick one company to go after and
you hope the rest will fall in line.”
Nick Villagra ’09 doubts the means of the Kick Coke campaign. “I know
the general aim of the campaign, which is to literally kick Coke,
but I think it’s more a matter of the machinery behind the corporation
than the substance itself,” he said. “If people really want to drink
Coke, I don’t see how the campaign can fight that. It’s hard to convert
people to dislike a certain type of food.”
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