'A Right to Know'

In the summer of 1996, I visited a sweatshop in Nicaragua with a multicultural delegation of students from the Southeast. In order to gain entrance, we had to tell the management that we were a business group interested in touring an "efficient garment manufacturing facility." The complex was reminiscent of the Central Prison in Raleigh, surrounded on all sides by a 15-foot barbed wire fence and patrolled by Gestapo-style guards wielding machine guns.

Unfortunately, the University administration is denying students and human rights groups the access to the addresses of the factories that make our apparel. The University administration argues that the level of disclosure outlined in our code is adequate for monitoring because it is more extensive than in any other code. We shouldn't, however, justify flaws in our code by pointing to even larger flaws in every other code. As is stands now, the University will select a combination of accounting firms and human rights groups to inspect a small percentage of the factories that make University apparel.

By not making the list of factory addresses public knowledge, the University prevents students or human rights groups from finding the thousands of unmonitored factories and conducting worker interviews. If the University really wants to make sure that our products aren't being produced under sweatshop conditions, it must publicly disclose factory addresses. We have a right to know!