By
Brett Erickson
Arizona Daily Wildcat
SAS members chain themselves to door handles of Admin. building in protest to Likins
Eight people, including six members of Students Against Sweatshops, were arrested yesterday afternoon after an eight-hour demonstration in which they chained themselves to the four main entrances to the Administration building.
SAS members Jesse Kirchner, linguistics sophomore; Lydia Lester, linguistics junior; Kent Walker, political science junior; Gabe Kirchner, sociology senior; Rachel Wilson, psychology graduate student; and Arne Ekstrom, neurological sciences graduate student were arrested by the University of Arizona Police Department on misdemeanor charges of interfering with the peaceful conduct of an educational facility.
Tucson community members Paula Arnquist, a member of the Southern Arizona Alliance for Economic Justice, and Alicia Weber, a former SAS member, were also arrested on the same charge. All eight protesters were released yesterday afternoon from Pima County pre-trial services and must appear in Pima County Court on Nov. 30 at 8:30 a.m.
"We're really tired, we're hungry and we all want beer," Wilson said yesterday afternoon.
The demonstration began at about 6:30 a.m. yesterday morning when the six SAS members chained themselves to four entrances to the Administration building. Members said they blocked access to the building, which includes the Financial Aid and Bursar's offices, because they said they had exhausted all other avenues of dialogue with UA President Peter Likins.
Cousins Jesse Kirchner and Gabe Kirchner and Walker each secured their necks to door handles of the building with bicycle U-locks. While those three held down separate entrances on the west, north and east ends of the building respectively, the three other SAS members who were arrested blocked the south entrance. Wilson, Ekstrom and Lester put their arms in PVC piping filled with three steel rods, roofing material, tar and rabbit wire, and then chained the piping to the door handles.
Likins arrived on campus at about 7:30 a.m. and went inside to his seventh floor office through a basement entrance that was not blocked off by SAS members. He released a statement about two hours later.
"I will not be coerced by illegal behavior that obstructs other students as well as faculty and staff from pursuing their lives," the statement said. "Reasonable people can discuss their differences in an environment of civil discourse. I cannot condone this interference in the orderly affairs of the university."
Police only allowed certain employees inside the building, which made a few students resentful toward SAS.
"I agree with their position, but this is the wrong way to go about it," said Jennifer Makowsky, creative writing graduate student. "They're not furthering their cause."
Casey Schmiett, an undeclared freshman, intended to drop his Spanish 102 class yesterday but was unable to enter the building.
"I feel they're just screwing the students right now. This is hurting me, this is hurting other students - this is not getting anything accomplished," he said.
Gilbert Arenas, an undeclared sophomore and member of the UA men's basketball team, said he disagreed with SAS's opinion about Nike but was not upset at the measures the group took.
"I love Nike. I love anything I wear," Arenas said. "If that's what they believe in, that's what they should do."
Wilson said disrupting students' schedules was not the intent of the protest.
"I feel bad that we've had to inconvenience students, because it's not their fault," Wilson said. "If we could just disrupt the president, we would"
She added that SAS originally wanted to seal off all entrances, but they could not find a time when the building was vacant. Had they blocked off the basement door with people inside, members said they believe they would have been charged with kidnapping.
At about 11 a.m., UA spokeswoman Sharon Kha said the state Fire Marshal's office and UA Risk Management told Likins to evacuate all employees from the building. Kha said all but about 30 of the building's 444 employees were sent home for the day.
The UA pays its full-time employees a minimum of $7 per hour, meaning the protest cost the university at least $15,000 in wasted man-hours.
Just before 1:30 p.m., UAPD Chief Anthony Daykin warned the protesters that they would be arrested if they continued to block access to the building. They had been warned twice earlier at 9:45 and 10:40 a.m. by Associate Dean Veda Hunn that if they remained chained to the doors, they could be suspended or expelled for breaking fire codes and disrupting university business.
After warning the groups at each entrance, about 20 Tucson police officers on motorcycles were called in to secure a perimeter around the building. Just before 2 p.m., about 20 UAPD and 15 additional TPD officers began taking apart the door handles that the protesters had locked themselves to. Once the door handles had been removed, SAS members provided police with the keys to the U-locks. Officers placed Jesse Kirchner, Gabe Kirchner and Walker into police custody.
By about 2:30, police had also removed the PVC piping from the remaining three SAS members locked to the door, and they were also placed in police custody.
Kha said the decision for police to end the demonstration was made by about 25 people after the order was given to evacuate the building. She said Likins and other administrators were most concerned about finding the balance between SAS's right to free speech and other students' right to conduct their business.
Gabe Kirchner said he did not regret SAS's course of action.
"You don't put your head in a U-lock and attach it to a door if you're not committed to what you're fighting for," he said.
SAS and Likins have been at odds for nearly two years about the UA's membership in the Fair Labor Association, a sweatshop monitoring organization that allows corporations on its governing board. SAS members want the UA to withdraw from the FLA and belong solely to the Workers Rights Consortium, a university-based monitoring system.
A ten-day sit-in in April 1999 resulted in Likins signing the "Commitments Relating to Sweatshops," an agreement that stated the UA would leave the FLA if it did not meet four provisions - full disclosure of factory locations, a living wage, protection of women's rights and unannounced independent monitoring - by August.
The FLA has not met all four conditions of the agreement, and Likins has balked on negotiations this semester, Wilson said, forcing the group to try alternative methods.
"We've taken all the official channels, so all that's left is the unofficial ones," she said.
The group began planning the protest about a month ago after Likins announced the UA would remain in the FLA. They had originally scheduled it for earlier in the week, when FLA Executive Director Sam Brown was on campus, but pushed the date back because of the scheduling conflict with the presidential elections.
Likins, meanwhile, maintains that dual membership in the FLA and WRC is the best plan for the time being. Likins said Richard Appelbaum, a member of the WRC advisory council and a sociology professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara, told him it would be 12 to 18 months before the WRC would begin monitoring sweatshop activity.
"During this period, the FLA will have begun its monitoring programs, and we will have concrete experiences to evaluate," Likins said in a Nov. 1 letter to UA law professor Andrew Silverman, an SAS supporter and member of the UA Task Force for Monitoring Labor and Human Rights Issues.
Wilson agreed that yesterday's protest was a success, even though Likins did not remove the UA from the FLA as SAS had wanted him to do.
"I think it was better than the sit-in," she said.
Sgt. Michael Smith, a UAPD public information officer, said about 20 to 25 off-duty police officers were called in for the protest.
