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University of Pennsylvania students strip over sweatshops

PHILADELPHIA - It had all the workings of a normal fashion show: models, an announcer and a crowd eager to see the latest apparel.

But this was not your usual saunter down the catwalk.

In a rally on College Green Thursday, students gathered to protest conditions in sweatshop factories. A series of speakers was followed by a "reverse fashion show" in which several students, male and female alike-wearing clothes made by companies that activists claim use sweatshops, including Nike and the Gap-took off articles of clothing as a demonstration against the deplorable and inhuman conditions to which they say workers are subjected.

A group of students gathered around the Button for the rally, and many others stopped by on their way down Locust Walk.

College freshman Anna Roberts-a member of United Students Against Sweatshops, which organized the event- said the group hoped the rally would be entertaining yet educational.

The main issue students were protesting is Penn's reluctance to force the companies that produce school-logo apparel to release the locations of their factories. Penn remains one of only three Ivy League schools which have not taken any steps to do so.

"We won't stop until the administration cleans up its act," said College sophomore Harrison Blum, another organizer of the event.

Blum riled up the crowd by asking them to chant: "What do we want? Justice. When do we want it? Now."

While students held signs of protest that read messages such as "Living Wage for Everyone," Haryanto, a former Nike employee in Indonesia and labor rights activist, spoke of his experience in a sweatshop. "Do it justice, Nike," he told a cheering crowd.

At the protest, students criticized the Fair Labor Association-the current monitoring agency of garment and other factories-saying it is not doing enough to protect workers.

Penn's USAS chapter is part of a national network of students at over 100 colleges and universities across the country who came together in the past two years to protest labor conditions at factories where official school apparel is produced.

Students at six universities last spring held sit-ins in support of full public disclosure. All the universities involved responded by pressuring the manufacturing companies to disclose their information by a certain date.

Last week, after months of pressure, Nike released a partial list of its manufacturing locations to five universities.

Other speakers at the rally included Penn Women's Center Director Elena DiLapi, labor union representative Charles Murphy, Hillel Director Jeremy Brochin and Lai Har Cheung, a member of Asian Americans United. DiLapi described her experience walking through a silk manufacturing plant in China where the conditions were horrifying.

Chung, whose parents worked in sweatshops, urged students to be aggressive.

Texas research suggests tiny life on Mars

AUSTIN, Texas - Ongoing University of Texas research adds another dimension to the theory that led NASA scientists to find evidence of life in a Mars meteorite.

In 1996, NASA scientists recognized shapes in the Mars meteorite as similar to those in pictures of hot springs minerals on Earth taken in 1990 by Robert Folk, a UT geology professor.

"The first tip-off that there might be life in the Martian meteorite was finding these images," Folk said.

Folk said his theory that the shapes in the pictures-microscopic balls and rods which he called "nanobacteria"-might be organic was long rejected because of their size. The nanobacteria were much smaller than scientists thought life could be, he said.

Size was one of the arguments against signs of life in the Mars meteorite, found in Antarctica in 1984 and dated at 4.5 billion-years-old by NASA and the University Oct. 1.

Nanobacteria range from about 50 to 200 nanometers, but the size cutoff for life has traditionally been 200 or 300 nanometers, Folk said.

Recent and ongoing research, however, suggests smaller sizes for life are possible.

Folk said despite this research, there is still strong opposition to lowering the minimum possible size of life.

Ralph Harvey, assistant geology professor at Case Western University, is among those who question Folk's conclusions.

"Their claims far outstretch their ability to prove them," Harvey said, adding that the bacteria-like shapes could be a result of chemicals or weathering instead of life.

Brenda George, a UT assistant geology professor who is working with Folk, said her experiments show only some forms of nanobacteria could be explained that way. Rods, chains of balls and long tubes are difficult to make without life, she said.

George is also researching other aspects of nanobacteria with Folk at the University.

Robert McLean, associate biology professor at Southwest Texas State University, said the University is well-known for its work with nanobacteria.

"UT is definitely the center in the country for nanobacteria research," McLean said.

McLean has been researching Finnish reports of a possible relationship between nanobacteria and health problems like kidney stones.

The UT scientists have found nanobacteria alongside larger bacteria in many places such as minerals, water, clogged arteries and tooth plaque. They also grew some samples of nanobacteria.

Folk and George are also collaborating with McLean and Leo Lynch, a UT alumnus and assistant geosciences professor at Mississippi State University.

Folk and George are currently preparing presentations on nanobacteria for the Geological Society of America's national convention in Denver Oct. 24-28.

Survey reflects achievement gap

BERKELEY, Calif. - Underrepresented minority college students have lower academic performance levels than their white counterparts, according to a nationwide study released Sunday.

The study, commissioned by the College Board, found that whites with college and advanced degrees, particularly from selective colleges and universities, outnumber blacks, Latinos and Native Americans.

Eugene Garcia, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Education, served on the National Task Force on Minority High Achievement, which conducted the study. He said the research was groundbreaking because it focused on minority performance at the upper levels of education.

"Overall, there has been a reduction in the achievement gap over the last 20 years, but at the upper echelon there has not been a lot of progress," Garcia said.

He said the study focused on variances in student achievement levels, such as graduation from the upper 10 percent of high school classes, enrollment in prestigious universities and college performance rates.

"There has been no reduction in the gap, even with controls for socioeconomic class minority students simply are not competing with whites and Asians," Garcia said.

While most studies have focused on minority students who are poor achievers, the College Board study compared minorities and their white counterparts at all levels of academic achievement, said Alan Schoenfeld, a UC Berkeley professor of education who also served on the task force.

"Most people have been worried about building the base; most studies focus on 'raising the floor', but this task force said 'look, we want to worry about the status of minorities at all levels,'" Schoenfeld said. "We wanted to look at the students who will be doctors, lawyers, professors, and other professionals-the top of the heap as well."

While many previous studies have equated lower socioeconomic status with low minority achievement, the College Board study showed that middle-class blacks, Latinos and Native Americans are much less likely to be high achievers than middle-class whites and Asian Americans.

The study found that although blacks, Latinos and Native Americans comprise 30 percent of the United States' population under the age of 18, they received 13 percent of bachelor's degrees, 11 percent of professional degrees and 6 percent of doctoral degrees in 1995.

Schoenfeld said minority students are less likely to have academic and social support networks by the time they reach college, which may hinder their academic achievement.

"Minorities who succeed do it against the odds," Schoenfeld said. "Sometimes they become loners to do that-the habits they've developed are those of going it alone. We need to provide inducements and support for them."

Statistics compiled by the task force showed that white and Asian American children are more likely to have parents with college degrees than underrepresented minority students. Children of parents with college degrees are much more likely to be successful than children whose parents never went to college, according to the report.

Finding a way to reduce the impact that parents without college degrees have on their children's education is crucial to increasing the number of high-achieving minority students, according to the report.

Roberto Hernandez, a member of MEChA de UC Berkeley, a Latino student group, said colleges and universities are responsible for providing resources to minority students.

"At the university level, we graduate at the same rate, but it's difficult because there are fewer resources-it's too late by then," Hernandez said. "It falls on the university to reprioritize and to lobby at the state level for more money."

Ronald Cruz, a member of the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action By Any Means Necessary, said the reinstatement of affirmative action in the admissions process is the only way to improve the success of minority students.

"Many minority students are discouraged from doing well because of the isolation they feel on elite college campuses-they don't have people to form study groups with," Cruz said.

For example, Cruz said minority students face a hostile atmosphere at UC Berkeley.

"The university has hired an overly white faculty who tend to be biased against minorities-they treat them as less intelligent and may disagree with what they say in their papers. We don't want a situation where a black student is the only black student in a class of 500, which we have now," Cruz said.

Cruz added that programs the university has developed to help minority students succeed once they are enrolled will not do enough.