Despite the budgetary concessions the College has had to make in response to the financial crisis, administrators are trying to ensure the social responsibility of the businesses it contracts.
Vassar, which employs more than 800 people, has hundreds of service-based business relationships. The College contracts companies for large-scale jobs, such as food services (Aramark) and trash services (Royal Carting), as well as smaller less consistent jobs like elevator repair (Otis). While Vassar is still working on implementing regulations on the types of businesses it contracts, administrators are working to ensure that each contracted company meets both the College’s budget and its standards for ethics and sustainability.
The College takes many factors into consideration when deciding with whom they will do business. “It’s a balancing act,” said Vice President for Finance and Administration Elizabeth Eismeier. Eismeier went on to explain that while the College prefers to do business with more sustainable vendors, sometimes the decision must be driven by price.
In addition to factors such as cost, ethics and sustainability, the College considers “the people behind the contracts.” For example, administrators prefer its base of vendors to be diverse, and preferably from the local Hudson Valley area. “We have a system,” explained Director of Purchasing Rosaleen Cardillo, “where we log information about the businesses we work with and tag them in [our computer]—as minority-owned, women-owned and so on—and then at the end of every fiscal year, we go over the list and see how we’re doing.”
The system is, explained Assistant Vice President for Budget and Planning David English, one that is carefully considered and well thought-out. “We have a philosophy we operate under,” said English.
Cardillo explained that over the years this philosophy has led to a notable increase in Vassar’s local contracts. “One of our main goals is to keep money in the community,” said Cardillo. Two local businesses that provide Vassar with products are Dowser Springs Water—based in Newburgh, N.Y.—and Nilda’s Desserts, a company owned by Poughkeepsie resident Jim Milano.
Cardillo, who has worked at the College for almost 19 years, explained that experience in the local area is essential to her job, as the Purchasing Office is centralized so that all of the College’s purchases must be directed through the Office. “We know the buying history. We have good contracts,” she said. “We know where we’ve been and where we need to go—and we know what we need to do.”
In recent years, the College has taken a stricter approach to Purchasing by implementing several regulations. The Vassar College Bookstore, for example, is owned by Barnes & Noble, a company which requires its vendors to sign a contract ensuring that they will not sell items made in or connected to sweatshops, a factor in the College’s choice of the bookseller.
Regulating contracts was also brought up in Fall 2008, during the debate concerning the short campaign to ban Coca-Cola products from campus. This year, Vassar has adopted an energy policy for Purchasing; all appliances now have to be Energy Star certified. To do this, the College is contracting a new company this year to bring Energy Star-rated microfridges to the dorms for rental, said Eismeier. Other efforts include creating a universal vendor code of conduct—with this, the College can demand that at least some requirements be met by any business with which we associate.
With such regulations officially on paper, the College’s guidelines become less flexible and more standard and transparent to new companies. Cardillo explained that office regulations also help in holding companies accountable for their actions, and that the Purchasing Office is trying to turn more guidelines into rules by getting them down in writing on all the College’s contracts.
The College and the Purchasing Office have similarly attempted to do their part in researching and fully understanding the businesses which they contract. When administrators were deciding whether or not to renew Aramark’s contract last Spring, members of the Purchasing Office went on site visits to nearby schools that employed competitors so that they could see if there was a better or more sustainable option for Vassar’s dining services. “Sometimes businesses are different than they appear to be on paper,” Cardillo said.
English similarly explained that Vassar is and will continue to work hard to hire reputable, quality and cost-efficient business that at the same time satisfy the College’s philosophical and ethical regulations. “We’re trying to do our best,” said English.
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