I wasn’t aware that a group called “Feminists Without Borders” was on campus. Ben Johnson, the writer of an Oct. 9 Diamondback column titled “Leading the way,” must have been referring to Feminism Without Borders when he accused a feminist group on the campus of “[being] kicked out of the administration building for harassing university President Dan Mote’s secretary while dancing to the sounds of Michael Jackson.” Either way, he got the name wrong, so you can’t expect much more from his argument … Johnson was talking about “Feminism Without Borders.” Feminism implies a movement for equal gender, class, racial, national and sexual rights, while feminists are those who consider themselves devoted to those causes.
Johnson completely distorted a serious problem and the actions that an activist student organization took to solve that problem. Feminism Without Borders was lobbying in President Mote’s office to get him to sign on to the Designated Suppliers Program, a program 40 other universities have already signed on to. DSP is an agreement that would help ensure that university-sponsored apparel – Terps shirts, hats, sweatshirts, etc. – are made in factories that support workers’ rights. The program would help ensure that the person who made your Terps sweatshirt earns a wage that worker can actually live off of and isn’t overworked or abused by employers. The university is already signed on to the Worker Rights Consortion, which helps ensure sweatshop workers’ rights and is supported by student tuition. Signing on to the Designated Suppliers Program is recommended in the Worker Rights Consortion. Because the Worker Rights Consortion recommends the university sign on to the Designated Suppliers Program, signing onto the DSP would be in the university’s best interests.
Another thing Ben Johnson missed is that the group had made countless attempts to contact President Mote via e-mail and snail mail. Only one rejection letter was sent back, and wanting to be persistent, Feminism Without Borders requested a meeting with President Mote to discuss the Designated Suppliers Program. These requests for a meeting were ignored. The peaceful dance-in that Johnson is referring to happened at the end of the spring semester as a last-resort attempt at making a change. Johnson’s article referred to student groups being na’ve in their attempts to make change, without taking into consideration that these groups had taken plenty of diplomatic effort to contact the administration. Maybe Johnson should instead look to the administration in these scenarios and realize that the administration’s silencing of student voices is the problem here and not the student voices themselves.
Speaking of administrative silence, instead of listening to what Feminism Without Borders’ protestors had to say, President Mote’s secretary called police around 15 minutes after they began their demonstration and some of the peaceful protestors were arrested. Clearly, Johnson is right in his evaluation of the situation. Obviously, the administration is the victim here, and not the arrested student.
In any case, last year’s events are just that – events that took place last year. It’s a new day for Feminism Without Borders, accompanied by a new direction. This semester, Feminism Without Borders is taking initiative to build a progressive student alliance among all student groups to halt the university’s complicity in the exploitation of sweatshop workers. Even now, Feminism Without Borders is sending representatives to educate student groups on the issue of sweatshop worker exploitation. Feminism Without Borders has already held a teach-in this semester, which was organized to help educate the campus population about the use of sweatshop clothing supplied to campus stores and how to stop it. Feminism Without Borders is also planning a (read: peaceful) knit-in on Oct. 31 from noon to 5 p.m. to support sweatshop workers’ rights. It’s discriminary to label a group as harassing or to paint a violent image of that group without knowing what they actually represent. It’s no different from ignoring feminists’ voices based on false and discriminative assumptions about them.
Rameen Chaharbaghi is a sophomore music education major. and a member of Feminism Without Borders He can be reached at rchaharb@umd.edu.
