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By Leana Donofrio

Daily Kent Stater

Most students buy a Kent State sweatshirt to display pride in the university they attend, but some students and activists say wearing a shirt with the Kent State logo means something more than school spirit.

Activists Jim Keady and Leslie Kretzu, who spoke Monday in the Kiva, said about 90 percent of all clothing in the United States is produced in sweatshops.

Kent State clothes and merchandise are produced in factories across the globe, from Mexico to Thailand. And the university has no code for the production of clothing carrying the university's logo, nor does it keep track of how or where the clothing is produced.

Just the fact that the clothing is produced in these countries, according to Kretzu, can be a guarantee the item was made in sweatshops. Keady said he believes this means Kent State may support sweatshops and labor abuse.

Kent State's basketball team also has a contract with Nike for shoes, a company Keady said is known for its labor abuse.

Keady said universities whose clothing is made in sweatshops are "putting the university's stamp of approval on the abuse."

Many students and administrators are now facing the reality that clothing with a school's logo is being produced under unfair and inhuman labor conditions.

But the company Follett, which runs the University Bookstore, said to its knowledge, none of the clothing the store sells is made in sweatshops.

Keady and Kretzu know the conditions of sweatshops well. They are with The Olympic Living Wage Project and spent a month living on Nike factory workers' wages in Indonesia.

Keady, 29, a former St. John's University soccer coach and Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity brother, and Kretzu, 26, who was a health care legal information specialist and a substance abuse counselor, lived off $1.25 a day in Indonesia -- the typical salary of a Nike factory worker.

Keady said they hoped coming to Kent State to speak would raise awareness of the issue and "use the human story to educate and empower."

"I don't know if there is anything you could relate our experience to. Most people have no idea what it is like to not have food, hot water, clean sheets, doctors or medicine. Many people hold conservative, ignorant viewpoints that you can live off of $1.25 a day as a human being," he said.

Keady said that by being a former jock and fraternity brother he hopes to show that students can care about an issue like sweatshops and not be a "hippie freak activist."

The Olympic Living Wage project said some abuses in sweatshops include workers of all ages working for pennies a day, sometimes 12-hour shifts. Workers are sometimes forced to work in factories against their will. Some are subjected to physical exams, including exams for women to prove if they are menstruating. In some cases, women of all ages are forced to take birth control pills to avoid pregnancy.

The working conditions in factories around the world that produce university-licensed clothing has led to the creation of a student group at Kent State, the Coalition for a Humane and New Global Economy, known as CHANGE. Kent State's administration also is making an effort to form groups to investigate exactly where and how university apparel is produced.

Ellen Zielinski, a junior applied conflict management major and member of CHANGE, said the group realizes even if Kent State stopped carrying clothing produced in sweatshops, labor abuse would not end. She said CHANGE hopes Kent State could adopt a code of conduct that vendors producing the university logo would have to sign and follow.

Zielinski said a code of conduct will show that Kent State does not accept the unfair treatment, abuse and exploitation of workers. By developing a code, Kent State would join at least 305 universities who have codes of conduct for how university-logo clothes can be produced. The codes are developed by the Fair Labor Association or the Workers Rights Consortium, both non-profit groups to protect workers' rights.

Licensing of all Kent State logos goes through the University Counsel. But, James Watson, University Counsel, said Kent State has established its own group to look into the problem and wants to avoid the influence of both the association and the consortium.

A three-phase plan has been implemented to look into the issue.

n The first phase, which already has begun, will include three faculty members, appointed by the administration, to do research on the issue. They will look at the working conditions and standards of countries as well as international treaties.

n The second phase will include a review of competing policies and positions among other universities and rights organizations, which will be conducted by faculty and students.

n The third phase will be for the university to develop a position on the issue, with a committee conducting focus groups and open forums to help develop the position.

Watson could not specify how faculty and students would be chosen for the groups or whether or not the plan would result in a code of conduct.

He said the university does not want to unfairly influence the first group so it will not give out names and will not accept the Workers Rights Consortium's or the Fair Labor Association's requests for Kent State to join their groups.

"Neither group can say, 'If you adopt a certain practice, you can make sure your products are not manufactured in a factory with unsuitable working conditions,'" Watson said.

Follett has a Vendor Labor Practice Code of Conduct. Cliff Ewert, Follett vice president for public and campus relations, said the company has monitors who keep track and inspect factories where it does business. Follett's monitors are hired from Price-Water House Coopers -- the same monitors Nike uses.

Follett's code of conduct requires a disclosure of all factory locations of companies it deals with, as well as a signed agreement from these companies stating Follett will "only do business with manufacturers whose workers are in all cases voluntarily present at work, not at risk of physical harm, fairly compensated, and not exploited in any way."

"We are pretty strict," Ewert said. "There are five sites worldwide, including the U.S., which we will be sending surprise visits by our monitors this next month."

Although Ewert would not name the company, he said recently Follett discovered a company was not meeting its code of conduct, and Follett sent all its products back.

Ewert stressed that having a code of conduct and monitors is good, but the strongest control of production of university apparel comes from the university.

"Licensing of a product still has to come from them [university]. If Kent State had a code governing the use of their name, it would take precedence over ours."

Kretzu suggested a start to stopping sweatshop abuse would be if universities demanded a list of factory locations from venders using their logo and then hired people to go and inspect those factories for labor abuses.

Keady said he realizes one university is not going to change all labor abuses in the world, but "humans get caught up in statistics. Universities should do this because these people are human beings, like us. I am not asking everyone to take the action I am taking. The biggest obstacle for people when presented with the opportunity to change things is the fact that they would first have to look in the mirror and say, 'I am the oppressor.'"