From: nick laskowski (laskowsn@georgetown.edu)
Date: Wed Apr 10 2002 - 12:29:52 EDT
With regards to Aaron's report...
Let us also not forget the issue of licensing contracts - the higher-ranked
schools, I'm relatively certain (haven't done the research here, sorry), are
much more likely to have high-powered branded logos and big licensing contracts.
I think USAS has made itself very attractive to such schools, and our
anti-sweatshop campaigns have often run into problems in getting schools with
smaller licensing contracts (or none at all) to participate in big brand-name
campaigns (i.e. Kukdong, New Era, etc.). The whole argument just becomes a LOT
weaker when you can't say "this sweatshop produces for OUR school with OUR
name."
I also think USAS's national structure and identity as a nationally-networked
organization works well for schools where people have a broad national
consciousness and get excited to be involved with a national movement, but it
doesn't help connect with local issues. I would speculate that the top-ranked
universities are the ones with students coming from around the country to attend
them, while students who go to their local/regional lower-ranked school are
going to be less interested in national/international politics than regional
ones. Our Regional Organizer system aims to deal with this, but without offense
to current or past ROs, we all know that this has a lot of room for improvement.
I don't think we're going to get anywhere with general theories of why
middle-class white kids are always more prone to joining activist movements than
working-class folks or people of color. We need to take a look at what we can
actually change, and focus on that. Hope this helps.
Screw US News & World Report - our schools aren't commodities!
- nick.
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