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SAS critique dangerous, simplistic

To the editor,

I found your recent editorial on Students Against Sweatshops at the University of Arizona deeply disturbing. As representatives of the press, you owe your readers enough responsibility to both educate yourselves adequately and refrain from dangerously simplistic suggestions in your editorial stances. To suggest that Students Against Sweatshops' decision against allowing the press to attend meetings (unless by invitation) is analogous to covering up for sweatshop labour is insulting and betrays both ignorance and irresponsibility on your part.

It is common knowledge that many group deliberations, especially when addressing important issues on which honest debate and disagreement occur, are better conducted outside public scrutiny in order to prevent self-consciousness and self-censorship by discussants who might not want their comments to be publicized out of context. With your misleading coverage, you appear to have betrayed the trust that SAS placed in you by permitting you to actually attend a part of our meeting.

Keeping the press out of such meetings is not an attempt to "prevent disclosure," it is to recognize that the press is an institution with substantial power to affect public opinion on issues being discussed.

It is hence fundamentally different for individuals in their personal capacity, who are all welcome to attend regardless of their affiliation with Students Against Sweatshops. In such a context, the presence of an institution like the press is likely to affect discussion detrimentally. Indeed, Wildcat reporters were welcome to attend the meeting, but not in their capacity as members of the press. This is a far more open approach than most university policy meetings. Given the "care" you profess to have for SAS proceedings and given your claim to represent most students at the University of Arizona, the very least you could do is to take these concerns into account.

Furthermore, if you are so convinced of your inalienable right as members of the press to attend any and all organizational meetings, perhaps you could display the same skepticism you have directed to SAS in asking the UA administration, or even Phil Knight of Nike, if all their cabinet or executive meetings are open to the press. Are all meetings of the University Committee on Corporate Relations open to the press? Are all meetings of the Faculty Senate Executive Committee open to the press?

How about the Wildcat's own editorial meetings? Does the Wildcat's deep interest and "care" for what happens at the University simply not extend to such matters?

I look forward to a far better standard of coverage from the Arizona Daily Wildcat in the future.

Ari Singh Anand

Students Against Sweatshops,

Member of UA Task Force on Labor and Human Rights.

Graduate student in comparative cultural and literary studies