On Wednesday night, the SC's General Assembly misrepresented not only me, but a significant majority of the students on our campus by backing Starbucks over Pura Vida. Its vote ignored the highly visible efforts of several student groups, including the Community Action and Social Justice Coalition, the Fair Trade Student Association and the Movement for Global Justice. Its vote also ignored two separate polls indicating a clear majority of student support for Pura Vida. Even with the advantage of the Starbucks brand name, Pura Vida beat out Starbucks 56 percent to 44 percent in last week's RHA poll and 53 percent to 18 percent in the The Eagle Online survey. The GA did little to resolve anything besides reminding us all how useless and out of touch that body really is. While I respect differing opinions, the debate Wednesday night was not only uninformed, it was appalling. Several observers left in disgust after one representative said that student government needed to put aside social responsibility and to represent the "assholes that don't care about migrant Mexican workers." Not only is it offensive to tag your so-called constituents as "assholes", the argument misses the point that very few Mexicans cultivate coffee. Andrew Mullen, another GA member, put the question in terms of "being a hippie or a capitalist." Nobody called President Ladner a hippie when the campus store stopped selling sweatshop goods. I'm not sure why you have to be a hippie today to ask AU not to sell coffee grown in sweatfields, especially when you have an alternative that invests 100 percent of its profits toward building school and other community-development efforts. Supporting Pura Vida is supporting a charity organization that promotes "capitalism as an agent for compassion and faith as an engine for action." In short, it's putting our ideas into action, and action into service.
Jared Hall is a Senior in the College of Arts and Sciences and a former Student Confederation policy adviser.
