Kim Pearson

© 2003-4. All Rights Reserved

Emily Klem's 12/1 Class Assignment for English 250

Date: November 28, 2000

To: Jesse Rosenblum

From: Emily Klem

Re: Nike sponsorship of Junior Golf Summer Camp

Nike has agreed to sponsor the Junior Golf Summer Camp at The College of New Jersey this summer. Tiger Woods will be making an appearance.

Since the name change of the College in 1996, some Trentonians have fallen under the impression that we are distancing ourselves from Trenton. This is not the case, and we would like to show these individuals that this assumption is not true. By hosting the Junior Golf Summer Camp and tournament, residents of Trenton may realize that we are, indeed, proud of our state’s capital and wish to remain active in the community surrounding our campus. Hosting the camp is only possible with the financial contributions of outside sources. Therefore, Nike’s participation is key in making this event possible.

Nike’s sponsorship of the event poses one concern for the College: its involvement in sweatshops. We have students on our campus who actively oppose companies that use sweatshop labor to make their products. By directly associating ourselves with Nike, we may face a loss of student support for the golf program itself, as well as a loss of support for the College due to the decision to work with Nike, a company that has been proven to use sweatshop labor.

Tiger Woods is an international celebrity and his visit to the College could provide tremendous opportunity for regional or even nation-wide exposure to our campus. Newspapers and television crews will be at the event to see Woods teaching a child of Trenton how to hold the club correctly or take a swing. Via these news stories, people will see more than the "good value" education that TCNJ is known for. They will see a school where the students participate in community activities and the beautiful campus where our students spend every day. This is valuable exposure for the College. It is advertising while serving the community at the same time.

The publicity raised by the event may draw anti-sweatshop activists to our school. The student organization at our school may be controllable, but if word gets out that Nike will be sponsoring this, activists from Philadelphia may decide to make an appearance. These activists may interfere with the summer camp program. It may also draw negative publicity for the College. Negative publicity is certainly not desired. Considering the trouble our campus has had recently with hate crimes and issues of bias, we need to have good things get out to the public. The activists will not be worried about the image of the College when they are picketing against Nike. They will be concerned with the workers in foreign countries who are being exploited by Nike, many of these workers children.

This raises an interesting point. We want to aid children of Trenton in this program. Nike as a sponsor is making it possible. But by ignoring the fact that they use sweatshop and child labor, are we hurting even more children who work in Nike factories?

The University of Oregon gave up a $30 million donation from Nike’s Phil Knight when President Dave Frohnmayer signed onto the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC). This occurred in May 2000. While a community service event was not at steak in this situation, $30 million is a lot of money. It is not the kind of donation that happens all of the time. The University of Oregon did not give up a specific community service event, but perhaps their stance will help the workers in oppressive factories. Students at the University of Southern Oregon are now taking the same steps as the University of Oregon, hoping to persuade their president to sign the WRC as well.

Nike has claimed to use no sweatshop labor, but the truth seems to be the opposite. A BBC reporter, Paul Kenyon, made his way into a Cambodian factory and saw that Nike was not living up to its guarantees of no sweatshop labor or child labor. Kenyon reported, "If Nike and the Gap were doing what they said, interviewing workers, monitoring factories properly, enforcing their anti-sweatshop rules, why hadn't they found what we had? This isn't the only factory we've investigated, we've looked at several others in Cambodia that produce for both the Gap and for Nike and they seem to have one thing in common which is persistent and serious breaches of their own code of conduct, it's almost as if that ethical trading policy which these big labels trumpet in Europe and America just doesn't exist in any real way here. In fact we found five other factories in Cambodia manufacturing for either Nike or the Gap. We interviewed dozens of workers, codes of conduct were regularly being broken but no one we spoke to had ever been interviewed by a monitor."

Not only does Nike continue to use sweatshop labor, but it also lies about it. This is significant information for activists to use against Nike. The fact that activists have so much information against Nike becomes a risk for our image when we work with them on the golf project. Perhaps activists will not show up to protest during the summer camp or the tournament. Maybe everything will go smoothly and do a lot of good things for a portion of the youth of Trenton. Nike and the College will get some good publicity. But are we allowing Nike to buy us? Are they buying us, and everyone involved in the golf project, to get good publicity to distract the public from the injustices they are committing around the world?