The campus’s choice in coffee has stirred up some heated debate.

The university’s dining halls do not offer Fair Trade Coffee – coffee with certification that guarantees it was grown organically and will financially benefit farmers – despite the 2003 Student Government Association promoting Fair Trade, a 2004 University Senate request and student advocates lobbying the administration.

“A lot of people in the senate are very interested in Fair Trade Coffee – but all that can be done is suggesting the purchase,” said Mary Giles, senate executive secretary and director.

Fair Trade certification is also placed on items such as chocolate and bananas.

“It’s not always true that an organization is well-run, but it’s pretty true for Fair Trade,” said Kenneth Leonard, an agriculture resources and economics professor.

Coffee stands in Van Munching Hall, the South Campus Commons Shop, the A.C. Williams Building, the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center and the Maryland Food Co-op currently offer Fair Trade Coffee. It is sold at the same price as regular and decaffeinated coffee brands, but the university must pay more to offer the organic brands because it costs more for certification, allowing farmers to profit more.

At the South Campus Commons Shop, Seattle’s Best’s brand of Fair Trade Coffee is equally as popular as the regular coffee brands, making up 40 percent of brewed coffee sales, according to Bart Hipple, administrator for Shops at Maryland, which oversees all the university’s convenience stores.

“To me, between organic and regular, I don’t see the difference, but I like that I’m drinking Fair Trade Coffee,” Hipple said.

Pat Higgins, director of Dining Services, said this fall she began researching the feasibility of adding Fair Trade Coffee to the dining halls.

“I am looking into the possibility of doing it,” Higgins said. “I’m not ignoring it; I have thought about it.”

Members of the Fair Trade Advocacy Club, a student organization in pursuit of having Fair Trade Coffee offered everywhere coffee is sold on the campus, said Higgins is avoiding them.

“Since [last fall] we’ve had various meetings with Pat Higgins about doing a switch to Fair Trade and she has said ‘no’ every time,” said Richard Randall Doak, the Fair Trade Advocacy Club president.

“I wanted to properly inform students about where prices come from and then would go to find a fair trade company that could beat that price,” Doak said.

Dining Services currently pays $3.76 per pound for regular coffee from S & D Coffee Inc., a North Carolina-based coffee supplier that gets its coffee from Central and South America.

Doak said he could find a deal that would cost about 10 cents more per cup for Fair Trade Coffee over regular coffee. The deal is similar to what is offered at the University of Florida, one of several universities in the country that sells Fair Trade Coffee in their dining halls.

“The customer doesn’t pay anything more; if they chose house blend or Fair Trade blend, its not passed onto the consumer. For us … more cost is involved, but we sucked it up,” said Jill Rodriguez, marketing program manager for Gator Dining Services. “It’s a good cause and we’re happy to do it.”

The University of Florida’s decision to sell Fair Trade Coffee was because of the requests of a Fair Trade student group the university worked with.

“If something is in the range of something we could do, we’d rather work with them and not fight,” Rodriguez said.

Nationally, Fair Trade Coffee is growing in popularity, although lack of awareness is holding it back, according to Tex Dworkin, online store manager for Global Exchange, a retailer of Fair Trade products.

“It’s difficult to market something when people don’t know what something is,” Dworkin said. “If the whole country could take after what’s happening on campuses, we’d be better off.”

Contact reporter Ben Block at blockdbk@gmail.com.