Medill junior Mischa Gaus is one of about a dozen members of Northwestern Students Against Sweatshops who spends his nights camping out on Library Plaza, where the group has vowed to stay until Northwestern joins the Worker Rights Consortium.
But while he frets about unsafe working conditions and corporate ties to monitoring organizations, his mother is back home in Jamestown, N.Y., worrying about her son’s health, welfare and studies.
“I wonder whether he’ll be safe, whether he’ll be warm – all the usual questions,” Paula Gaus said. “Of course, I’m also somewhat concerned if this will create a problem with his schoolwork.”
In the midst of midterms and during a time when unpredictable weather straddles the fence separating winter and spring, a group of practical idealists is taking on third-world working conditions, indifferent students and an unforgiving Chicago climate.
These students want NU to distance itself from the Fair Labor Association, a sweatshop monitoring organization that they charge with being too cozy with corporations such as Nike and Adidas. They have written up a proposal, petitioned and pressured administrators to join the WRC, which they say will be more effective in monitoring sweatshops.
Progress, as expected when dealing with university bureaucracy, has been less than swift. This Friday, however, an NU representative will attend a Chicago meeting of the WRC. What the school will do from there is anyone’s guess. But NSAS has made very clear what it will continue to do: camp out in Library Plaza until NU joins the consortium.
At about 1:30 Wednesday morning, NSAS member Chris Sherman, sporting a Mohawk and tattered jeans, stood shivering in the plaza. The chilly weather and an uncomfortable night’s rest has become old hat by now for the Weinberg sophomore, who spent Sunday night at The Rock and Monday and Tuesday night in the plaza.
The soccer ball that three students had kicked around two hours earlier was gone. A radio lay on its side, silent for now because NSAS members were waiting to resume their now nightly meeting. Soon, the only available bathrooms would be through the 24-hour door at Kresge or at Burger King.
“We’re doing this for three reasons,” Sherman explained. “We want to put pressure on the administration. We want to create a safe space on campus for student activism. And we want to continue the education process.”
The impromptu camp site is serving the group well. Around 11 a.m. on Wednesday, while one NSAS student tried to sleep in her tent, a pair of NU football players and an elderly woman with the Institute for Retired Learning stopped by to ask questions amid the bottled water, tubs of hummus and sleeping bags.
NSAS is spreading its message one person at a time, while hoping to convince an entire university. Whether you agree with or even understand the position these students are taking, it is impossible not to admire the extent to which they have gone to publicize their cause.
“I’m hoping that there are other kids at school who are equally involved and equally want to change things,” Paula Gaus said. “And I hope the university takes note and does something.”
