How will you spend your Thanksgiving break?
The University Senate rejected a resolution to lift NYU's 27-month embargo on Coca-Cola products yesterday, narrowly defeating a proposal from the Senate's Public Affairs Committee to rescind the ban by just five votes.
The ban, enacted in December 2005, prohibits the sale of Coca-Cola products on campus until the company agrees to an independent assessment of its labor practices in Colombia following allegations that it sponsored the murder of several union leaders at its Colombian bottling plant.
PAC chairman Arthur Tannenbaum introduced the resolution last month after confirming that Coca-Cola had agreed to an investigation by the International Labour Organization, a division of the United Nations that focuses on labor issues.
But at today's Senate meeting, the issue was hotly contested. Senators debated the neutrality and efficacy of the ILO investigation and the progress of the pending investigation. They then rejected a motion to table the resolution, 30-21, and then more narrowly voted to reject the resolution itself, 30-26.
A handful of supporters of the Coke ban gathered outside the Senate meeting to protest the possible repeal, distributing pamphlets and juice boxes, as an alternative to the fizzy drink.
Meanwhile, Tannenbaum urged senators to focus on the specific language of the existing ban, saying that the company had met the conditions in the 2005 resolution.
"The intention of the ban is to have Coke agree to have a responsible third party source conduct an investigation of its business practices in Colombia," Tannenbaum told the Senate. The ban has put pressure on Coca-Cola, Tannenbaum said, making it a success.
In recent weeks, student activists have cried out against rescinding the ban and appealed to their student representatives to oppose the committee's recommendation.
At the Senate meeting, Student Senators Council chairman Justin Lee moved to table the reversal resolution until the fall, pending more discussion and information from the PAC. SSC Vice Chair Julin Cyr seconded Lee's motion, saying that the Senate was not prepared to make a judgment on the motion.
Still, Tannenbaum defended his committee's proposal.
"I don't think we should wait any longer," Tannenbaum said. "What we wrote [in 2005] had nothing to do with an investigation taking place or being finalized, it had to do with Coca-Cola being willing to participate and having an independent organization make such an investigation."
But supporters of the ban have criticized the ILO's investigation, questioning its neutrality and efficacy.
Specifically, they have accused the organization of having a conflict of interest, because Ed Potter, Coca-Cola's director of global relations, is also a long-time member of the ILO.
Tannenbaum said that Potter would have no part in the investigation and said that it would not affect the ILO's neutrality.
Senators also criticized the investigation's speed. It was originally announced in early 2006, spurring the University of Michigan to revoke its own Coca-Cola ban. But last year, the Michigan Daily reported that the ILO had fallen behind on all of its deadlines for the investigation.
"That's irrelevant," Tannenbaum told one senator who raised the issue. "We need to resolve this today. This isn't a hurried up project, we've been talking about it for most of the year."
"We waited this long to bring it to life again for the Senate to look at it because we were hoping that there would be an investigation [going on by now], but it's just not going that way," he added.
Sylvain Cappell, chairman of the Faculty Senators Council, echoed Tannenbaum's arguments and asked the Senate to focus on the specific issue at hand - Coca-Cola's compliance with the language of the original resolution.
"[Tannenbaum's] argument sounded pretty loud, clear, and simple to me," Cappell said. "I think we had a simple resolution that called for an independent investigation. We lose our moral force in terms of boycotts or in terms of protest if we don't act in accordance to the terms we set ourselves and I don't see that setting up a committee to investigate the ILO is what we ought to be doing in the next step of this process."
After Lee's motion to table the issue was defeated, Diane Yu - NYU President John Sexton's deputy chief of staff, who chaired today's meeting in his absence - called for a vote on the proposal to lift the ban.
The proposal's close loss came as a surprise to many members of the Senate.
"[It's] interesting that it was close," said Jonathan Goodman, a faculty senator from NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. "Clearly, the students are very concerned."
Tannenbaum said it was unclear what actions the Public Affairs Committee will take when the Senate reconvenes in September, though he did not rule out revising the original resolution's conditions or presenting another proposal to lift the ban.
Additional reporting by Jane C. Timm. Sergio Hernandez is a staff writer. E-mail him at shernandez@nyunews.com.
