At the Vassar Student Association (VSA) Council meeting on Nov. 2, Council passed the Kick Coke campaign’s resolution by a vote of 14 to 8—only one vote above the majority required to pass.
The vote followed nearly an hour-and-a-half of contentious debate, along with a vocal audience of more than 30 students.
Representatives from Kick Coke attended the meeting to discuss the issue and defend their position. Kick Coke is a student-run campaign to remove Coca-Cola products from Vassar’s public venues, due to allegations that the corporation has committed repeated human rights, labor and environmental violations, and is indirectly responsible for the deaths of union members at Coca-Cola bottling plants. Thus far, 45 colleges and universities have chosen to remove Coca-Cola products, including Bard College, Oberlin College and Smith College.
At the last Council meeting on Oct. 26, the Kick Coke group presented the resolution to Council, although the motion to pass it was tabled in order to allow representatives to collect feedback from the student body.
Reed Dunlea ’09, a member of the Kick Coke group, opened the discussion at Sunday’s meeting, addressing some of the largest concerns raised about the campaign over the past week. Dunlea explained that the resolution, which states the VSA Council’s support for removing Coke products from campus, was not a question of student choice. “This campaign is about the institution and community of Vassar College lending its support to people who’ve been negatively affected by Coke’s practices,” said Dunlea. He reminded the audience that even if Coca-Cola products are banned from campus, students can choose to purchase the products off-campus.
Though various reports have been published asserting that Coca-Cola has been improving its business practices, Dunlea stated that all of the reports, even the one published by the International Labor Organization (ILO), a branch of the United Nations, were heavily biased toward Coke because the corporation either funded the investigations or was represented on their review board.
Still, many Council members remained unconvinced. Noyes House President Sean Koerner ’11 expressed skepticism about some of the data presented by Kick Coke. Koerner cited the fact that the ILO’s report, which provides the most recent data on the issue, states that Coke has begun to support unions. The ILO report also claims that Coca-Cola is improving its business practices, and several schools, including Swarthmore College, have considered lifting the ban against Coke after removing it from their campuses in the past few years.
Koerner continued to argue that Coke was not directly responsible for the labor violations, noting that the abuses were committed in bottling plants, which the Coca-Cola Company allows to produce and sell their beverages. However, the issue is complicated by the fact that the Coca-Cola Company is a majority shareholder of the company in charge of the bottling plants.
Cushing House President Mathew Leonard ’11 also pointed to a statement made by the union claiming that Coca-Cola had nothing to do with the death of its officers.
“It seems like the tide has turned the other way and Coke is responding,” said Terrace Apartments (TAs) President Riane Harper ’09. “These other schools are in conversations with Coke and Coke is moving in the path that [the campaign] wants them to,” she said. “I’m wondering if banning [Coke] would be the best thing the school could do or if the school would be better served to engage the corporation and use other means of influence,” she continued. The Coca-Cola Corporation has won several environmental awards in India, including one from the town of Kaladera, whose water the corporation has allegedly polluted. Harper eventually voted in favor of the resolution.
Class of 2009 President Luis Hoyos called for a compromise. “I think right now that student input and the evidence is inconclusive, unfortunately, and I think that there are alternative ways to reach a compromise between both sides so that we don’t alienate a side of our constituency,” he said. Hoyos, too, voted in favor of the resolution.
Class of 2011 President Joseph Redwood-Martinez addressed the Kick Coke representatives directly. “It’s really good to see organization leaders on campus,” he said. “That’s really the backbone of the student experience here. I think sometimes the VSA loses sight [of the fact that] we are every student at Vassar College. I’m so happy that you guys are here to remind us of that, and furthermore, I’m happy that as the representative from the Class of 2011 I’ll be supporting this resolution to kick Coke.” Martinez voted for the resolution.
Though the resolution passed, it did so by a narrow margin of only a single vote. Following the decision, the audience—comprised largely of the student groups who made up of the campaign—cheered the Council. VSA President Jimmy Kelly '09 acknowledged that although the debate was contentious, he was pleased that the group was able to discuss it civilly and bring the matter to a vote.
Eight members of Council voted against the resolution: Cushing House, Noyes House, Raymond House, the Class of 2010, and the Vice Presidents for Activities, Operations, Finance and Academics.
Reaction to the decision has been largely mixed. An anonymous student blog has garnered more than 150 comments in response to a post on the resolution, many of them negative. Members of Council have tried to reach out to their constituencies and explain the decision-making process.
Harper wrote to her constituency of TA residents early on Monday morning. "It was a very hard decision last night, but I ultimately felt that the Kick Coke campaign articulated their stance well and answered questions when put to them," she wrote. "I had to make a choice on the matter, but I tried my best to voice the concerns from TA residents on both sides during the Council meeting."
Town Students President Dana Class '11 wrote a similar message. “Twenty-three people asked me to vote for kicking Coke, while only one asked me to vote against it. So based on those 23 votes, I voted in favor of the resolution,” she wrote. “I want to make it clear that my personal opinions had no bearing on the decision, because in this case, I felt that my duty was to vote on your behalf.”
Hoyos e-mailed the Class of 2009, along with President Catharine Bond Hill, to explain that his decision to vote in favor of the resolution was the product of both the majority support of his constituency and his own views. “In my opinion some of the evidence presented by the Kick Coke Campaign regarding the human rights violations of Coca Cola in Colombia and India were not completely conclusive,” he wrote at 4:18 a.m.
Hoyos was not the only one to write late-night e-mails. At 3:13 a.m., the VSA Executive Board wrote to the entire student body explaining that this resolution was not originally one of Council’s goals for the year. “When we were approached by the Kick-Coke Campaign in mid-October, we told them what their rights were under our Constitution. Any student at Vassar is welcome to bring an issue before the Council and any student can make a motion for us to pass legislation or to take a stand on an issue,” they wrote. “Since kicking Coke was not one of our goals, we left it off our agenda; the Kick Coke campaign chose to bring it up in Open Discussion, the part of our meetings where any student on campus is able to speak.”
Following the vote, the matter will now be brought before the Committee on College Life (CCL), who will make a recommendation to President Catharine Bond Hill. Hill will make the ultimate decision on whether Vassar will stop selling Coca-Cola products on campus.
5 comments