Cornell President Hunter Rawlings has submitted the university's comments on the draft collegiate code of conduct that seeks to eliminate "sweatshops" by establishing safe and humane working conditions in factories where college names and logos are applied to apparel. The draft code was developed by a task force convened by the Collegiate Licensing Company (CLC), an Atlanta-based business that represents more than 170 colleges and universities in the product-licensing arena. Cornell was one of 14 schools on the CLC task force.

In a March 29 letter to CLC, Rawlings called on the task force to strengthen its code by requiring full public disclosure of factory locations where collegiate goods are manufactured. Rawlings also proposed other changes that he said "will strengthen the code of conduct in the area of fundamental human rights."

Rawlings said the changes emerged from campus discussions, including those with students. The provisions include: protecting the rights of female workers; ensuring and expanding freedom of association and collective bargaining for workers at factories in the U.S. and overseas; recognizing the role of non-governmental organizations in external monitoring of factories; and providing concerned students, faculty and staff at CLC member institutions with access to external-monitoring compliance reports.

Earlier, in a March 1 letter to key manufacturers of Cornell apparel, Rawlings underscored the importance of having in place an effective monitoring system that assures compliance with the collegiate code. In mid-March, Cornell announced that it was joining with 16 other colleges and universities that intend to rely on the Fair Labor Association to administer a monitoring program for compliance with the collegiate code.

Rawlings praised members of Students Against Sweatshop for focusing campus attention on the issue of sweatshop labor by co-sponsoring a campus forum in February and

for working cooperatively with university administrators to develop the additional language that Cornell will propose to the CLC task force.

"Student leadership is one of the reasons why the entire university community shares the concern that the Cornell name be associated with apparel manufactured under humane working conditions," Rawlings said in his letter to CLC.

"We at Cornell remain united in the pursuit of the task force objective -- the improvement in working conditions for the men and women who produce products that bear our name," Rawlings stated. "We recognize that success will not come overnight, but we will have a positive impact if universities and colleges across the nation stick together and make this a continuing priority in their collective relationship with the apparel industry."

Last spring, Cornell became one of the first universities to declare that it would require manufacturers of Cornell memorabilia to follow a code of conduct. Since then, university administrators have participated in the CLC task force and in discussions on this subject with students and other members of the Cornell community, the Council of Ivy Group Presidents, the White House Apparel Industry Partnership and the Fair Labor Association, among others. On Feb. 22, more than 150 people attended a campus forum co-sponsored by the university and Students Against Sweatshops.