Over the last five years, the LSU chapter of Student Environmental Action Coalition (SEAC) has worked on expanding recycling at LSU. SEAC has worked with LSU Facility Services and Residential Life in attempts to increase recycling on campus. Our efforts to work through the system were unsuccesful so we started in the Fall of 2000 to put up our own recycling bins in dorms around campus. This direct action forced the administration to pay attention to recycling and in the Spring of 2001, SEAC was finally allowed to present Chancellor Emmert with a proposal to expand recycling to all of campus. We showed how LSU can save money by recycling as well as decrease its environmental impact. As a result of this meeting, a pilot recycling program was implemented in seven dorms on the east side of campus (incidentally, these were the mostly the same dorms we had done our recycling programs in. Direct action works!) You can recycle glass, plastic, aluminum, and paper on the first floor of East and West Laville, Blake, Acadian, and Mcvoy. Miller and Herget have recycling on each floor. We've seen that bins on each floor work better than bins on the ground floor only and hope that all the dorms will expand their programs to all floors. Our continuous pressure on the administration is the only thing that has kept recycling on their agenda. Our proposal of self-assessed fees to pay for campus-wide recycling in the Spring of 2001 and 2002 led to movement by the administration to quietly find sources of funding to expand recycling and thus avoid an embarassing public debate on the issue. Environmental concerns are less important to the administration than searching for new sources of profit for the university. Activists need to continue to push the administration to take action now on implementing campus-wide recycling.

Check the tag of your LSU baseball cap, the label on your LSU t-shirt. It was most likely it was made overseas in countries like Bangladesh, Guatamala or Honduras. American universities license their names and logos to many companies to make jackets, sports gear, t-shirts, baseball caps, etc. Those companies, such as Nike and New Era Cap, contract out the actual manufacturing of the apparel to factories found throughout the Third World and also within the United States. These factories, often operating without oversight and regulation, either underground or in free trade zones, we call sweatshops, or workplaces that consistently violate workers' rights. In 1996, when the Kathie Lee Gifford scandal exposed the use of exploitive labor to make top of the line clothing bearing her name, government, industry, and universities moved to control the damage, creating the Fair Labor Association. The FLA was designed to monitor conditions in factories making apparel, but many student activists felt it was too dependent on apparel industry money and that its standards were too weak. In 1999, students and human rights activists later formed the Workers Rights Consortium, pointing out the serious deficiencies and ineffectiveness of the FLA. The campaign to get LSU to sign onto the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC) began in the Spring of 2001. Two PSA student government senators introduced a bill urging LSU to join WRC rather than the Fair Labor Association (FLA). The bill passed unanimously with only one abstention. Four days after the bill passed, the administration signed onto the FLA without informing students or faculty. (We found out that LSU joined the FLA months later by checking the FLA's website. LSU has yet to make any public statement about its joining the WRC or FLA.) This contradicted a statement made by an LSU administrator at the SG meeting, "LSU is not close to making a decision about which labor code to sign on to." Over the summer, two LSU students traveled to Chicago to attend the United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) national conference to learn more about sweatshop labor and network with other students working on these issues. In fall 2001, PSA regrouped and organized. PSA members wrote and distributed a report about sweatshops called "Sweatshops and LSU," which is available on the Reports page. We decided to focus our efforts on getting a National Labor Committee (NLC) speaking tour of Bangladeshi women garment workers to LSU. With the help of the Louisiana AFL-CIO, the Baton Rouge Society of Friends, the Bienville House of Peace and Justice, LSU Muslim Student Association, Amnesty LSU, SEAC, the Bangladeshi Student Association, and the LSU Student Senate, the women visited LSU on November 14, 2001. Over 500 people heard the women's testimony during their stay in Baton Rouge. Sweatshop Committee (a SEAC/PSA committee) members were interviewed on a local radio station about sweatshops, the World Trade Organization, and the global economy. In September 2001, PSA students attended a meeting with LSU administration urging them to join onto the WRC. We also demanded that they disclose the names and addresses of factories where LSU licensees make products. When we got this list, we cross-checked with a list of factories the National Labor Committee investigated in Bangladesh. We found that of the seven sweatshops the NLC discovered, six were making clothes for LSU. (Check www.nlcnet.org for their full report on Bangladesh.) One of the women who visited us in November, Ms. Janu Akter, worked at one of those factories making LSU baseball caps for 14 cents an hour. We got in touch with Mr. Victor Bussey, former president of the Louisiana AFL-CIO and an LSU Board of Supervisors member. He was instrumental in moving our campaign forward. His pressure on the administration from above combined with our pressure from below was too much for the administration and on November 13th, just hours before our guests from Bangladesh arrived, LSU told us they would join the WRC. The Bangladeshi Student Association gave the speakers a home-cooked dinner and helped in many other ways to make their visit here a success. For example, one of their members was a big help in translating for us. Their efforts made the speakers feel more at home. Check out the Committees page to see when and where Sweatshop Committee meets if you want to help us in our campaign to protect the rights of the people who make clothes for our school. Concern for working people won't be a priority of this school unless we make it one. Through our campaign to get LSU to join the Worker Rights Consortium, we showed that a combination of direct action, legislation, research, and hard work can make LSU do something it is dead-set against doing. It worked once and it can work again.

The Horticulture Hill Farm Teaching Facility was once known only as the Hill Farm. Set on a rise of land next to the newly dredged University Lake, in 1934 it consisted of forty acres, Julian C. Miller (a Cornell Ph.D.), and a foreman, plus mule. The Hill Farm conducted research in plant breeding. Extensive programs existed for vegetables, flowers, and fruit trees. The American Rose Society held its All-American Rose Selection tests at Hill Farm. Overall, the goal of a land grant university was accomplished on this land, set a good walking distance from original campus buildings. The 1960's saw Hill Farm's contraction with Sorority and Fraternity Rows being built. The fruit-breeding program was relocated to other research stations in Louisiana. Then the Student Recreational Sports Complex was built, and the All-American Roses moved to LSU's own off-campus research station, Burden Plantation. The Lod Cook Alumni Center, SRSC playing fields, and Lod Cook Conference Center and Hotel have sprung up also, taking more land the Hill Farm will never get back. Of the original forty, only four acres remain. And that could have gone the way of the roses. The Horticulture Department should be commended for holding its own against administrative proposals of how 'best' to use the land. The name was changed to Horticulture Hill Farm Teaching Facility and transformation began. A classroom building, complete with wet lab and mixing room, was built, giving the Hill Farm permanence. There is a shade house, two greenhouses, a can yard, an orchard, and organic vegetable gardening, all to teach students first hand about horticulture. Landscaping is being developed and a small community garden is growing. Spectrum Alliance and SEAC operate a thriving garden producing food for the Baton Rouge Battered Women's Shelter and for our own use. The danger to Hill Farm was tangible, despite its obvious importance on campus. With the completion of the Lod Cook Conference Center and Hotel, there was speculation that the adjacent Hill Farm would be a perfect parking lot. Students sent many email messages in protest. Conversation with Lod Cook himself revealed that he liked the idea of green space next to the hotel. Letters were written to The Reveille, stirring campus-wide visibility. Hill Farm was saved, not paved. There was another speculation that Hill Farm land may have been needed to provide roadway in the new Campus Master Plan, specifically an entrance to a parking garage. With the mobilization of the Horticulture department and concerned students continuing, the Master Plan developers soon realized they had little chance of paving over the Hill Farm. A Student Government Bill calling for the administration to never again take land from the Hill Farm was passed, making clear the student body's opinion. The continued existence of the Hill Farm on campus is not guaranteed, though for now it is protected. The administration may have other plans for this peaceful patch of land but not if concerned students and faculty keep saying "hands off the Hill Farm".

The statements and opinions included on this site are those of the Progressive Student Alliance only. Any statements and opinions included in these pages are not those of Louisiana State University or the LSU Board of Supervisors.