President Steven Beering stepped out of his Hovde Hall of Administration office Friday morning and served the six starving students a prepared statement garnished with compromise. Although their yearning appetites are quelled, their collective hunger for human rights will surge on for, at most, another eight months.

Beering’s decision to release the statement/compromise that ended the hunger strike and quieted the campus uproar for workers’ rights provided a moral victory for both sides.

For the strikers and low-wage workers, the Purdue Students Against Sweatshops has gained assurance that Purdue will definitely join the Worker Rights Consortium by Sept. 30 if the agency is able to meet a series of criterion. If the University is unable to make a determination between the two labor regulating organizations, it will either join a different organization or form its own labor-monitoring agency.

Most importantly, Beering has handed down a guarantee that Purdue will commit to a monitoring agency within the next eight months regardless of the conclusiveness of the school’s research into the issue. This not only may better the lives of workers in countries such as El Salvador, but also will lift the guilt associated with sweatshop-made clothing from the University’s shoulders. All this was accomplished by only a handful of students.

Although they received a guarantee, the protesters' push for urgency on the issue remains unrequited by the Beering administration. The University will still be able to fully research the issue and choose the best agency.

For Beering, the accepted compromise will allow him to end his tenure strongly. Let’s face it, he doesn't want to exit Hovde Hall for the last time with the knowledge that six students are lying in hospital beds, receiving nourishment intravenously — especially if he could have done something to prevent it.

The reason that this compromise was successful was not because one side was more tenacious than the other was — although the student protesters exemplify strength and perseverance. Simply, it happened because both are working toward the same humanitarian goals.

Sometimes it's unfortunate that this campus is known for its conservatism. Much of the student opinion was against the strikers, as if they had no cause for protest. Students walking to class through Memorial Mall perceived "tent city" as an eyesore rather than a means for justice. And some students actually held a cookout nearby as a means of ridicule. Those who ridiculed the protesters reveal nothing but the complacency and malleability of weak-minded people afraid to violate any norm.

For the strikers to achieve the success that they did in this social/political environment is remarkable and their recognition comes in the form of workers' rights.