Students and student paper blind to truth

Dr. Peter Likins is such a skilled and smooth politician that he managed to fool not only members of our university press, but other members of our student body as well.

Judging from the recent articles in the Wildcat, an outsider would assume that the SAS sit-in is about Peter Likins and whining students trying to "win the rebellion."

Rather, as any SAS member will tell you if you (gasp!) actually choose to listen to them, it is about workers being chained to their sewing machines. It is about locking workers in factories and not allowing even a bathroom break.

But Dr. Likins has been so smooth, he's convinced everyone he cares about labor rights. He even participated in a march on Saturday for a living wage in Tucson!

Having only read the Wildcat, I would have to believe that the SAS requests are simply unreasonable and that Likins should be commended for his behavior. This is patently untrue.

One student's letter suggested that the SAS should, for example, stop quibbling over deadlines - these things take time, we should believe.

Goal no. 1 in the resolution is "full public disclosure of factory addresses for apparel companies and their contractors."

Are we to believe that corporate executives are so bone-headed it would take them until August 2000 to figure out where their own factories are located?

Likins' oh-so-reasonable counter-proposal even stipulates that corporations would have an additional six months to comply - a stipulation completely ignored by the Wildcat! Does it really take 22 months to print out an address book? Of course, the other goals will take some time, but the presidents of several other universities, including the University of Michigan and recently the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill have found the SAS's demands reasonable and they have signed. What makes the UA so special?

Lori Ito
Anthropology graduate student