After Swarthmore College enacted a ban on bottled Coca-Cola products because of alleged human rights violations in the soft drink maker's Colombian bottling plants, the company announced last week that it is supporting an independent investigation of the accusations.
Stuart Hain, Swarthmore's associate vice president for facilities, said he received an e-mail from an unidentified source at Coca-Cola March 7. The e-mail, which Hain forwarded to The Herald, stated that the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations has asked the International Labor Organization to conduct an independent investigation of the bottling plants in question. Coca-Cola supports this investigation.
Hain has asked students at Swarthmore to respond to this information and is still waiting to hear their reaction, he said. "I don't know whether this will satisfy our demands or not, but it seems like a step in the right direction."
The Swarthmore ban of bottled Coke products in its snack bars, which was enacted this week, is the culmination of a more than a year's worth of work on the part of both students and administrators to pressure Coca-Cola to allow an independent investigation of its operations in Colombia. The college's effort forms part of a broader nationwide campaign that has been successful at schools such as the University of California at Los Angeles, New York University and the University of Michigan.
Swarthmore students began the Kick Coke campaign last spring, according to Camilla Leiva, a member of the campaign. "The campaign has focused largely on raising awareness in the student body, which allows us to cite student support when we meet with the administration to discuss action on campus," she said.
The Swarthmore administration has also been actively involved since last spring. "Our response started over a year ago when we went to a Coke shareholders meeting and voted for a resolution for an independent investigation," Hain said.
Last fall, Swarthmore sent a letter to Coca-Cola asking them to support an independent investigation, Hain said. "When we never heard back from our letter and Coke hadn't done anything, we made the decision to remove bottled Coca-Cola products from the coffee bars and snack bars," he said.
The bottled Coca-Cola products that have been removed include bottled juices from Odwalla, a subsidiary of Coca-Cola, Hain said.
But unlike NYU and the University of Michigan, Swarthmore's administration did not eliminate the contract with Coca-Cola for the soda fountains in the main dining halls.
While the Kick Coke campaign is well underway at Swarthmore, members of the Student Labor Action Movement at Harvard University have only recently begun their efforts, said SLAM member Jamila Martin.
SLAM sent a letter to Harvard President Lawrence Summers at the end of February requesting a meeting to discuss the possibility of Harvard terminating all business with Coca-Cola, she said. But the designated response date, which was Monday, came and went without a response from the university.
From this point on, SLAM plans to continue building student and faculty support to force the administration into a meeting to discuss Harvard contracts with Coca-Cola. "The problem at Harvard is that there aren't ways for students to talk to the administration about these types of issues. It's a difficult campus to have a normal dialogue," Martin said.
Harvard University Dining Services has three contracts with Coca-Cola, one of which is up for re-negotiation in December 2006, Martin said.
But SLAM remains hopeful that despite the failure of its initial letter to elicit a response from the administration, HUDS will respond in the future, she said. "HUDS has experience with activism of this type and has generally been very receptive to student demands," Martin said.
Harvard's financial weight also gives the university a large role to play in efforts to keep business practices ethical, she said. "Harvard should be held accountable for its business relationships. Given the large benefits Harvard reaps from various institutions and organizations it's involved in, it needs to work within the same laws as everyone else," Martin said.
At Brown, there are no student groups publicly protesting Coca-Cola. In an e-mail, Gretchen Willis, director of Dining Services, wrote that she has not heard any complaints or concerns about Coca-Cola from Brown Students.
Chris Hu '06, a member of Brown's Student Labor Alliance, told The Herald in an e-mail that his group has not made the Coke issue a priority due to the absence of a clear and markedly more ethical alternative to Coca-Cola.
