12/1 class work

Josh Davidson's 12/1 Memo assignment

Date: November 30, 2000

To: Jesse Rosenbloom

From: Josh Davidson

Re: Junior Golf Tournament

The College of New Jersey is an institution that strongly supports human rights and should not host the Junior Golf Tournament this summer. The involvement of Tiger Woods, who has recently signed a 100 million-dollar, five-year endorsement package with Nike causes this not to be in our best interest. Woods has made no attempt to explain his view on Nike's poor treatment of their employees in Thailand. If he does not say why he supports Nike, this event will be seen as a public relations help to

them and will upset many of our students.

Stick to our core beliefs.

One of our core beliefs says, "The College regards education in the service of human welfare as it's chief end." Our involvement with Nike, who is unfair to their employees, will go against this belief. How can we teach students the service of human welfare, if we don't pay attention to the welfare of these workers? The golfers at the tournament may one-day go to this school and we do not want to teach them to support a company like Nike.

Nike has not shown that they share our core belief. Human welfare is not their chief end. They are paying an athlete 100 million dollars to live in luxury, while employees in Thailand will receive nothing near this amount in total and live under inhumane conditions.

Student disapproval will be high.

Many students at the College would strongly disapprove of the tournament. Many already take part in groups that support Human Rights, such as Amnesty International. We are likely to experience a lot of protests.

Other schools like the University of Oregon, University of North Carolina, and University of Wisconsin at Madison have already experienced student protest. Many University of Oregon students did not want a twenty-five million-dollar donation from Nike, because of their sweatshop policies. How will our students react to our idea? Even if protest will be light, we should find out what the majority of our students and faculty feel and take it into consideration. I'm sure we will find many that oppose the tournament.

Woods must explain his affiliation with Nike.

Woods has not made an attempt to explain how he feels about what is happening in Thailand. If he were to come here, he should.

We must have a full grasp of his stance on the situation, so we can explain it to students and faculty. They will have questions and will deserve answers.

Will we be helping Nike in public relations?

Many charity events held at colleges can turn into public relations events for the companies that sponsor them. If we let that happen, the meaning of the junior golf tournament will be lost. We do not want all the hard work of those involved go to waste. If we let this become an event for a major company to clean up their image, what used to be a low-key event will become too large. The original focus of it will be lost.

Message to the children who take part in the tournament?

The purpose of the junior golf tournament is to let young people interact with professional golfers and be led in the direction of becoming productive members of the Trenton community. Putting them in the middle of what may become a media circus will ruin this goal. They will see this as a negative event and will no longer want to take part in the program.