Likins ends negotiations with activists

Ian C. Mayer Arizona Daily Wildcat UA President Peter Likins (left) speaks about his final proposal to end the five-day sit-in yesterday as Students Against Sweatshops members Avery Kolers (center) and James Cook (right) listen. SAS members did not find Likins' proposal acceptable and will remain stationed on the seventh floor of the Administration Building.

After exchanging proposals with student activists for five days, Likins said "the game has changed" and asserted he will no longer negotiate with protesters.

"They can stay in the lobby of the seventh floor of the Administration Building until Christmas," he said. "I gave them what they asked for, and that made me realize this was a process of escalation."

Avery Kolers, a spokesman for the University of Arizona's Students Against Sweatshops, said Likins' decision to stop exchanging resolutions with activists is a "negotiation tactic."

"Whatever else is the case, we're in negotiations - that was known implicitly from the start," he said.

Likins presented student activists with his final statement Saturday, which he said included "substantial" concessions.

But the president said students introduced new demands yesterday, causing him to abandon hopes of reaching a compromise.

"I have to fear that if I say yes again, they'll ask for something else," he said.

Likins' resolution includes a March 2000 deadline for implementation of two of four factors - public disclosure of factory locations, a "living wage" for employees, greater protection for female workers and independent, unannounced factory monitoring.

All four provisions must be met by August 2000 or the UA will pull out of the Fair Labor Association, an independent monitoring organization criticized by protesters for corporate involvement.

Likins yesterday pledged to stand by those provisions regardless of students' actions.

"I'm going to pull back and commit myself to the cause," he said. "I'm not going to worry about the dynamic of the sit-in. When it gets to be not about sweatshops, but about winning the rebellion, that's sad."

The sit-in, which is the longest ever held in America by the international SAS organization, will continue until Likins adds "accountability" into the university's labor code with companies that manufacture apparel featuring the UA logo, Kolers said.

About 67 students invaded Likins' office Wednesday afternoon, concluding a march through campus. Each night, about 35 students have sacked out with pillows and sleeping bags on the office's floor.

The protesters routinely bellow out a window atop the Administration Building, yelling slogans like "Justice late is justice denied."

The sit-in escalated Friday when students entered the Bursars' office, pounding drums and using a megaphone.

The activists' uproar prompted employees to shut down the office and call the University of Arizona Police Department.

Although the situation was diffused quickly, Likins warned activists against disrupting the "educational process of the university."

"We have thus far allowed them to disrupt our operations in hopes that we could come to a convergence, an understanding," he said. "I just cannot understand why they would interfere with the business... of the student body."

Kolers, however, said the activists' aims are educationally oriented and that their goal is to strengthen the UA's commitment to human rights.

"Disruption is a means, not an end," he said. "Our purpose is not to get in anybody's way."