Draft of anti-sweat shop code of ethics on university Web site

By Leana Donofrio

Daily Kent Stater

After months of proposals, plans and protests, a recommendation for a code of conduct for Kent State clothing has been proposed.

The university started a three-phase plan to create a code in November.

The plan is in phase two. Phase two involves the creation of a code prohibiting the sweatshop manufacture of clothing with the Kent State logo. A committee of students and faculty will write the code and choose a monitoring company to enforce it.

The code of conduct is partially finished, and it is posted on Kent State's Web site. Anyone can submit recommendations or comments to the site, which the committee will then use to revise the code.

President Carol Cartwright and other administrators will then have to approve the code and monitoring company before they become active.

This follows protests by students and members of the Coalition for a Humane And New Global Economy, who demanded a "sweat-free KSU now." In phase one, a different committee made up of three faculty members appointed by Cartwright researched how to create a code.

Senior Ellen Zielinski is one of five student members on the second committee and a member of CHANGE. She said the committee meetings to finish a code and find a monitoring company have been going smoothly.

Zielinski and other members of the committee may push to include in the code that Kent State will contract with worker-owned cooperatives.

University Counsel James Watson who handles Kent State's contracts with clothing manufacturers said, "If the committee continues at the rate they are going, we will be able to publish the code and approve it by the end of the semester."

Zielinski hopes students will understand the significance of creating a code of conduct.

"It shows Kent State is taking a stand (against labor abuse)," she said.

Zielinski is also confident that code and a monitory company will be chosen before the end of the semester, but she said if not, it will be done next fall.

"If nothing else matters to students, they should care because it is your jobs that are threatened when all the manufacturing jobs are sent out to other countries," she said.