AU is not the only school where students have fought to bring the fair-trade coffee company Pura Vida to campus.
Stacey Hess, a regional sales manager for Pura Vida, said Pura Vida has appeared on many campuses due to student pressure on administrations and the need for a campus coffee program that provides high-quality coffee.
Hess said some campuses took more drastic measures to get fair-trade coffee than others. For example, students at the University of Notre Dame participated in hunger strikes for fair-trade coffee in the spring of 2004. Pura Vida now comprises 90 percent of the coffee sales on that campus, Hess said. At Loyola University in Chicago, students passed a resolution demanding that only fair-trade coffee be served on campus.
Other colleges and universities had less controversy bringing Pura Vida to campus. Pura Vida came to Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., three years ago. Craig Ward, director of food services at Evergreen, said Pura Vida came to campus by the will of the students with little trouble.
"I believe it was a smooth transition," he said.
Jarret Mucci, assistant manager at the Davenport Campus Center at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., said the school had an easy transition from Starbucks to Pura Vida. The decision to switch was influenced by the politics of the students but ultimately decided by the administration, he said.
"Even though Starbucks is a good company, Pura Vida is more attuned to the clientele at our campuses," Mucci said.
The number of campuses Pura Vida serves increased from three in 2002 to 75 currently. Pura Vida aims its campus programs to suit the needs of college students by serving high-quality espresso drinks and foods that are popular with young adults, Hess said.
"From the very beginning, Pura Vida is 100 percent committed to quality, so we offer high-quality beverages," she said.
Pura Vida is on almost all of Bon App?tit's accounts on the East Coast and some on the West Coast. It is also offered at a number of self-operated food services at schools such as Azusa Pacific University in California.
Azusa Pacific was one of Pura Vida's first customers, Hess said. The school chose Pura Vida because of the company's commitment to children in coffee-growing nations, she said.
"Pura Vida exists to support programs for at-risk children in coffee-growing countries," Hess said.
Doug Fore, assistant director of food services at Azusa Pacific, said the university originally sold Starbucks coffee but switched to Pura Vida after the school grew dissatisfied with Starbucks' business. A group of students were lobbying for fair-trade products at the time, which led the school to look at different vendors, he said.
Fore said students did not reach the point of protesting Starbucks.
"I think it was ... before fair trade got popular," he said.
Tom Searls, retail operations manager at the University of Iowa, said Pura Vida approached the school about two years ago to be its coffee vendor. Students were becoming concerned about serving fair-trade coffee on their campus, he said.
Searls said the students appreciate that the money they pay for coffee goes back to the growers. Pura Vida has been well received on the campus.
"I literally have not had one complaint since they've been here," he said.
Students were polled to see what kind of coffee they wanted on campus, Searls said. 96 percent voted for fair-trade coffee.
"It was the students who decided, not an administrative stronghold," he said.
Some AU students do not think fair-trade coffee is beneficial to the growers.
"If you look at the economics of fair trade, it's really not that beneficial," said Rachel Weizman, a freshman in the School of Public Affairs. "Because the cost of coffee goes up, fewer growers can stay in business."
Gregg Roman, a sophomore in the School of International Service, said students should lobby for more important causes.
"You have your great majority of people who could [not] care less about free or restricted trade like myself, and the bottom line is why do we have to make a socially conscious statement about coffee?" he said. "I just saw Armenians outside the Turkish Embassy protesting the fact that Turkey doesn't recognize the Armenian genocide. That's something [legitimate] to protest"
