By Vanessa Renderman
and Carly Maitlen

Nathan Strange smiled as he broke a loaf of bread and shared it with his friends. "Bread is good," he said. It was the first bite of food he'd had in about 10 and a half days.

Since March 27, six members of Purdue Students Against Sweatshops have been hunger-striking, urging the University to join the Worker Rights Consortium, a factory-monitoring agency.

Friday, the students agreed to end the hunger strike because of the University's decision to have provisional membership in one or more factory-monitoring groups by Sept. 30.

"What we’ve done is a very positive thing," Strange, a graduate student in engineering, said. "We’ve sent out a very positive message. We’ve done this all legally. We haven’t gone up and vandalized anything. We didn’t have a stupid riot, right? We got an agreement and a win-win situation," he said.

A group of anti-sweatshop students met with Joe Bennett, vice president of University relations, for six and a half hours late Thursday night to negotiate an end to the hunger strike, according to Ben Partridge, a senior in the schools of Science and Liberal Arts.

The letter that resulted from those negotiations states, "Regarding the (Worker Rights Consortium), if the (Worker Rights Consortium) has met the following criteria Sept. 30, 2000, Purdue will undertake provisional membership in the consortium." It then lists eight criteria including a review of the governance structure and a guarantee that the University will not face liability for the consortium's actions.

The agreement also includes requirements for the Fair Labor Association, the other factory-monitoring organization.

"Regarding the (Fair Labor Association), if the (Fair Labor Association) makes the following structural changes in its governance by Sept. 30, 2000, Purdue will consider provisional membership in that group." It then lists 10 criteria including the inclusion of university students in the governance process and the prohibition of self-selection of monitors by licensees.

Purdue president Steven Beering commented on the agreement at Friday’s Board of Trustees meeting.

"We’ve had a very productive dialogue with the students on this," he said. "We are very proud of them."

Beering said he plans to appoint a standing committee to work toward a resolution in time for the Sept. 30 agreement.

"We have left open the door to consider other (monitoring) organizations if this fails to materialize," he said. "We have a lot of work left to do."

While Purdue Students Against Sweatshops is calling this action a "win" on its behalf, another student organization is also calling this a "win."

Members of Purdue’s University Conservative Action Network have been against the University joining the Worker Rights Consortium.

Ryan Travis, president of the organization and a sophomore in the School of Agriculture, said the consortium will not be able to comply with the requirements outlined in the University’s agreement.

"I think this document is the first step of the University’s rejection of the (Worker Rights Consortium)," he said.

One criterion that Travis said is going to prevent the University from ever joining the Worker Rights Consortium is the sixth point, which states, "Providing written assurance that membership will not compromise Purdue’s neutrality as an institution. The materials available from the consortium indicate that the agency is intensely involved with a variety of organizations espousing very definitive social, political, economic and environmental viewpoints."

Travis said, "The (Worker Rights Consortium) will never be able to keep the University politically neutral."

If the University decides to join neither the Worker Rights Consortium nor the Fair Labor Association, other monitoring options will be considered.

The hunger strikers and supporters held a fast-breaking lunch of bread, bagels and fruit Friday afternoon to officially end the hunger strike.

The next day, members from Purdue Students Against Sweatshops were still making efforts to educate the community about sweatshops by holding a workshop as part of the 19th annual Holocaust Remembrance Conference.

Partridge said sweatshops are a "think global, act local issue."

They talked about social change and how change can be made through both individual and collective action.

"Sweatshops are a civil rights issue … sweatshop abuse is very much a women’s rights issue," Partridge said.

Ninety percent of sweatshop workers are women he pointed out, adding that workers and bosses are often from different backgrounds, clouding the lines of communication.

Members from Purdue Students Against Sweatshops will continue to educate the community and fellow students about the atrocious working conditions in sweatshops — sweatshops that are not just overseas, but here in the United States as well.