President Bill Perry was surprised with an impromptu meeting Wednesday at 2:52 p.m.

Armed with two signs, a letter of support from the Student Senate and a petition consisting of 968 signatures — a few signatures shy of their 1,200 goal — four student members of the Fair Trade Global Justice Coalition walked into President Bill Perry’s Old Main office.

The petition was addressed to Perry and the members of the President’s Council.

While in the office, the four students — still holding the signs — gave Perry an approximately two-minute long explanation of their collective hope that the university would affiliate with the Worker Rights Consortium.

In the past, Eastern was affiliated with the Fair Labor Association, a nonprofit that focuses on having major clothing manufacturers adhere to national and international labor laws.

President Bill Clinton created the association in 1999.

The Worker Rights Consortium was started by student groups for universities to help monitor their apparel’s manufacturers.

Sara Boro, a second-year college student affairs graduate student, said she hopes the administration will weigh both options and decide to join the more than 180 affiliated universities in the United States.

“At the university, we talk about becoming global citizens and doing all of these things to impact the world in a positive way…and we feel like the university is a perfect place to start something like this,” Boro said.

Roy Lanham, a campus minister for the Newman Catholic Center, showed up to support the student organization, and said he thinks the organization’s passionate response was a testament to the university.

“Too often I think we find ourselves saying, ‘when I get out of here, when I get my degree, when I leave Eastern,’ and what I find more exciting is when students say ‘hey, how do I begin to apply that which I’ve already learned,’” Lanham said.

Eastern needs to lead by example, he said.

“This institution can’t just talk about doing what is good and right to our students and say, ‘go do that, see you,’” Lanham said.

Boro first learned about the issue of fair trade from Haiti Connection while at the Newman Catholic Center in her junior year as an undergraduate student at Eastern.

Now Boro said her day-to-day life has changed.

“I look at all of my T-shirt tags, I went through my entire closet—I just freaked out and stopped buying stuff,” she said. “What I want to do personally now is to research what to buy to make it easier.”

While wearing Eastern gear, Boro said she would like to know – without a doubt – that the workers, who sewed the T-shirt, picked the cotton or even the coffee beans were treated properly and received adequate compensation.

Fellow member Alayna Graham, a senior sociology major, agreed.

“Here in America we have a minimum wage so that our citizens are not going to be suffering as much as the people in Bangladesh or Haiti…they don’t have people protecting them,” Graham said. “We are (their) voice instead of just letting them fend for themselves.”

Fair trade is about standing up for people whose voices are being suppressed by governments, manufacturers and lack of resources, Graham said.

“We are trying to get people in there making sure that the people that do have jobs have enough money to support their family,” she said.

Lena Elmuti, a senior chemistry major, said the petition signing process was predominately about educating students on labor laws and conditions in other countries.

“Most of the students had not even heard about the WRC let alone the Fair Trade Global Justice,” Elmuti said.

Members of the Fair Trade Global Justice Coalition decided to change its name to the Students for Peace and Justice.

Ryan Freer, a junior political science major, said the issue of fair trade is a bipartisan issue.

“I think people, on some level, really want human rights of people—it’s not just a right or left, Democrat or Republican issue,” Freer said.

Boro agreed.

“Just paying people a fair wage can change a lot of things and once they have enough money then they can start to improve their own communities,” Boro said. “I think it’s a better answer to a lot of the world’s problems is to just give people what they deserve and their dignity.”

Nike Ogunbodede can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].