College Should Send Message to Sodexho About Prisons

To the Editor:

This is an open letter to the Housing and Dining Committee.
We commend you on your decision to reject Sodexho-Marriott Services as a dining service management company finalist. But there’s one more step that needs to be taken. The Housing and Dining Committee will be sending statements to all the rejected bidders explaining why they failed to become finalists. The statement sent to SMS must explain the reason their contract with Oberlin is at an end is that for over a year, Oberlin students have been campaigning for the contract to be cancelled. Why? They’ve been protesting SMS’ private prison connections, bad labor practices and genetically modified, non-organic, non-local food.
Through its parent company, Sodexho Alliance, SMS is the leading investor in the world’s largest private prison company, Corrections Corporation of America. And their involvement goes beyond their corporate connections: as a member and financial supporter of the right wing think-tank American Legislative Exchange Council, SMS lobbies for shorter paroles, for prison privatization and for prison expansions. SMS is also known for its poor labor record and anti-union management policies. One glaring example is that last year, the National Labor Relations Board found that SMS had illegal work rules prohibiting employees from talking to outsiders about their working conditions or talking to each other at the work site before or after their shifts. These rules make it nearly impossible for workers to unionize. SMS was obliged to post federal notices for at least 60 days at more than 5,000 locations rescinding the illegal rules, but this year the NLRB has found that SMS did not do this adequately, and must re-notify its employees or face civil prosecution.
It isn’t necessary to go into all the examples of injustice perpetuated by this company in the statement. To send a brief letter broadly explaining student outrage at Oberlin would be a significant achievement and set an important precedent. The campaign against SMS is at 50 colleges across the U.S., and in the past year SMS has already been kicked out of six colleges; Oberlin is the seventh. (American University in Washington D.C. ended their contract with SMS on April 4, beating us by three days). Oberlin’s decision should send a message to other colleges, saying that investment in the private prison industry outrages Oberlin’s tradition of social justice. That will encourage other colleges to take that stand as well. We should follow the excellent example set by our divestment from South Africa in the 1980s in protest of apartheid, and by signing onto the anti-sweatshop Workers Rights Consortium only last year. It’s also important to make sure SMS knows that if they continue their current practices, there will be protest from students, and that college administrations will listen to those protests. If SMS begins losing lots of their college contracts, their parent company will divest from Corrections Corporation of America, which would be an important financial blow to the exploitative private prison industry.
We urge you to use a version of the following statement, proposed by the NOT WITH OUR MONEY! campaign at Oberlin, in communicating with SMS.
“We at Oberlin College have decided not to renew our contract with you because we are very concerned with your connections to the private prison industry. In a referendum 84 percent of students voted to end our contract with you. The investment of your parent company, Sodexho Alliance, in Corrections Corporation of America and its ownership of private prisons in Britain and Australia is something that the student body at Oberlin considers unacceptable. We are also deeply concerned with your unfair labor practices and your heavy use of non-organic genetically modified foods.”
Thank you for your consideration.
If you agree with this open letter, please e-mail Dean of Students peter.goldsmith@oberlin.edu (and cc it to campaign member ted.virdone so that we have a record of how many e-mails are sent) asking him to send that statement to SMS. We want him to know that the Oberlin community cares about this issue, and intends to strike a lasting blow against private prisons.

–Ted Virdone
College junior
Housing and Dining Committee 
student member