Sodexho Gone, but More Needed
 
To the Editor:

We of NOT WITH OUR MONEY! people before profits at CDS (popularly known as the anti-Marriott campaign) wanted to say thanks for kicking out Sodexho Marriott Services. After more than a year of campaigning, the Housing and Dining Committee met on Saturday and picked three dining company finalists, and none of the finalists are SMS. So we’ve won, and we’re ecstatic.
But we’re not thanking specifically the Housing and Dining Committee (although of course many of them are great folks). Because the reason SMS is packing their corporate bags isn’t because their bid just wasn’t good enough, or because another company offered to put chocolates on our pillows every night. Nor is it because the H&D Committee suddenly saw the light and realized that private prison investment just isn’t a good fit for Oberlin’s tradition of social justice. The reason we’ve dumped Sodexho is because the student population showed their dissatisfaction with the company, with their prison profits, bad labor practices and genetically-modified pesticide-drenched sludge-food. The H&D Committee responded to the pressure put on them by the community as a whole.
The power at Oberlin doesn’t lie with the administration, and decisions aren’t made in committee meeting rooms. How does change happen at Oberlin? Change happens when 1,000 Obies gather in Wilder Bowl to boycott CDS for a day, eat OSCA-donated food, and listen to a speech by a national organizer for the NOT WITH OUR MONEY! campaign. Change happens when people show up spontaneously throughout the course of the H&D Committee meeting and demand to know why it’s closed to them even though the H&D bylaws say the meetings should be open to all. Change happens when students talk to dining hall workers about why they’re paid $6.50 an hour with no health benefits. Change happens when 84 percent of the student body votes to end the contract with SMS in a student union referendum. Change happens when President Nancy Dye gets up in an auditorium to make a speech celebrating Oberlin’s signing of the Workers Rights Consortium to take a stand against sweatshops abroad, and the whole crowd rises to their feet to demand that she end temp labor here at Oberlin College. 
What changes happened due to student protest and organizing during this campaign? Dye promised to end temp labor here — and so far, the temp pool has been reduced by 50 percent. The organic salad bar was instituted in Stevenson. The dining contract was put up for bid one year early. And finally, of course, SMS was rejected. Kicking out SMS is a pretty important change that we all made happen. Oberlin has just become the seventh college in the U.S. to dump Sodexho. (American University in Washington, D.C. did it on April 4 — they beat us by three days). The national campaign against SMS is at 50 colleges across the U.S., and 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.
In order for our precedent to be set most effectively, the H&D committee should send a letter to SMS telling them, “You lost the contract because Oberlin students were outraged at your parent company’s investment in the private prison industry, at your history of union-busting labor practices, and at your GMO non-organic food.” That’s not word for word the proposed statement from the campaign, but that’s the gist of it. If you agree with us that sending that statement to SMS will help build the national movement, e-mail Dean of Students Peter Goldsmith and tell him so (and cc it to senior Ted Virdone or another campaign member, so we know how many e-mails are sent).
Again, we want to say thanks, not just for getting rid of this terrible company, but for teaching a lesson in how to organize, in how to protest, in how to get stuff done. There’s a lot more to get done, so let’s get doing.

–Chris Thomas 
College junior
for the NOT WITH OUR MONEY! Campaign