About 30 Northwestern students helped block intersections and form human barricades earlier this month to protest the Washington, D.C., meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. But when a World Bank recruiter came to Norris University Center on Tuesday to interview interns, students were content to distribute literature outside the building.

“It’s not like we wanted to stop anyone from working there,” said Weinberg junior Jonathan Tucker, one of about 10 students who participated in the event, which organizers said was not a protest. “We just wanted to raise consciousness about the issues surrounding the World Bank and the IMF.”

Students who oppose the IMF and World Bank said they believe the organizations’ loan policies have an array of negative consequences for underdeveloped countries, including environmental problems, displacement of native people and cuts in social spending. Many protesters say the lending policies work primarily to the benefit of developed nations.

“The World Bank and IMF’s policies serve to better the First World, and primarily that’s what they do,” said Elizabeth Brennan, who helped organize Tuesday’s event. “They adapt the economies of the developing countries to capitalism, which isn’t always the best thing for a country.”

Brennan, an nyou music editor, said countries often make too great a sacrifice to qualify for money from the World Bank or IMF.

“To gain this capital, there’s a lot of exporting of natural resources and the encouragement of growing cash crops rather than sustainable agriculture,” said Brennan, a Medill junior. “Take India, for example. India could be self-sustaining, but it’s producing cash crops for the First World like cotton, tobacco and tea. In part that’s due to structural adjustment programs by the World Bank and IMF.”

Tucker, who also participated in the Washington protest, said raising awareness was necessary to effect change within the Bank and the IMF.

“Right now the organizations aren’t accountable at all, so the only thing that can sway them at all is public opinion,” said Tucker, a Weinberg sophomore. “We’re not trying to stop anything, just (make people) slow down and think of the impact of globalization on some of these countries.”

Jason Pielemeier helped organize the trip to Washington to protest the World Bank. On Tuesday, he interviewed for a position with the organization.

“You need people working from the inside and people pressuring from the outside,” said Pielemeier, a Weinberg senior.

There are people working within the World Bank to change its policies, and Tuesday’s event “strengthened their hand,” he said.

“It was a good occasion to bring the conversation and education … back to campus and spread that education to other people,” Pielemeier said.

Some critics of the protests call the movement a paternalistic exercise in pity, but Brennan disagreed.

“It’s not a sympathy movement,” she said. “It’s not, ‘Oh, these poor people in the Third World.’ I just really think the world system is flawed. And once you’re awakened to that, how can you possibly ignore it?”