Cornell University will sponsor a public forum on sweatshop labor and collegiate apparel production Monday night, March 13, in 305 Ives Hall on campus. The 8 p.m. forum will include Sam Brown, a human-rights activist who is the first executive director of the Fair Labor Association (FLA). More than 130 colleges and universities belong to FLA, a monitoring and enforcement organization that also includes manufacturers and nongovernmental organizations.

Brown's career includes a mix of anti-war and human rights activism. He has also held elected office, as treasurer of Colorado, and served as head of the Peace Corps and Vista and as U.S. ambassador in Eastern Europe, where he worked with human rights groups in implementing the Helsinki Accords. Brown also was founder of a company that builds low-income housing.

Cornell, which has maintained a leadership role in the development of a collegiate code of conduct for apparel manufacturers, was one of the first campuses to support full, public disclosure of factory locations where apparel bearing Cornell names and images are produced.

Earlier this year, Cornell shared with Cornell Students Against Sweatshops (SAS) the initial listing of factory locations for more than 100 Cornell licensees. The 66-page report was gathered through the efforts of the university's licensing agent, the Collegiate Licensing Co. (CLC). The list includes information about factory locations from large corporations such as Champion to smaller, less well-known firms.

SAS and Cornell administrators have been meeting regularly to exchange ideas and to provide support for their shared objective, the elimination of sweatshops. They also are working jointly on a comparison of the merits of the Fair Labor Association and the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) and their approaches to factory monitoring and inspection.

The campus forum is an opportunity for members of the campus community to learn more about organizations involved in the anti-sweatshop movement, said Henrik N. Dullea, vice president for university relations. A forum involving represenative from the WRC will be scheduled later.