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BY ELENA CHOPYAK

In print | September 27, 2007

Last Thursday, Kick Coke held an informational meeting for students interested in the campaign’s most recent developments, including a possible setback pending a decision from the Board of Managers.

At the meeting, members presented the facts and a timeline of the Kick Coke campaign to attendees before disbanding to allow for questions and letter-writing to the Board of Managers.

In the meeting, the Kick Coke campaign expressed feelings that there was a disconnect between campaign organizers and the Board of Managers. “The Board seems to have little awareness of what our campaign has been about,” Kick Coke organizer Andrew Petzinger ’09 said.

“work[s] hard to make the campus a great place. They have a different idea of the campus than the students,” said Sarah Roberts ’08, another key member of the campaign.

Roberts said that the Board of Managers did not feel as though they were amply involved in the decision-making process when the administration agreed to remove Coca-Cola products from campus. Additionally, some board members believed that the decision was neither well-informed nor well-researched. “Some Board members think all the information comes from the KillerCoke Web site, which just isn’t true,” Roberts said.

Kick Coke organizers also expressed frustration with the communication between their cause and administration even during their original bid to boycott Coca-Cola.

“It was hard to know what the administration wanted us to do,” Roberts said.

Roberts said that administration was not consistent with their requests, sometimes referring to money as an obstacle, other times referring to student support as an issue.

“It was like pulling teeth to find out how much [the change] would cost,” Roberts said. In the beginning, according to Roberts, the administration predicted the cost of removing and replacing Coca-Cola products to be $1,500 during the first two years of the change.

A few students asked Kick Coke organizers about Pepsi’s corporate accountability abroad, wondering whether Pepsi, another large enterprise, truly presents a socially responsible alternative to Coca-Cola.

“We did think about this a lot,” Kick Coke organizer Zoe Bridges-Curry ’09 said. “We were excited by the prospects of a local company or bottler, but administration said that Pepsi was going to be the cheapest choice.”

Bridges-Curry said that Pepsi, like Coca-Cola, depletes water supplies overseas, but that the allegations against Pepsi are less serious.

“One of the best ways to get to all of [the companies] is to target the industry leader,” Bridges-Curry said, citing the exposure of Nike’s lack of corporate social responsibility as an example. Bridges-Curry and Roberts also pointed to the practical reality in targeting one company rather than another. “You can’t ask everyone to boycott every single bad company,” Roberts said.

Kick Coke organizers expect to have 5-10 minutes to present their case to the Board at the meeting this upcoming Friday during the meeting. “The Board wants to see that the potential for change is worth the cost. They want to see that we have done our research,” Bridges-Curry said.

According to member Ruth Schultz ’09, Kick Coke will meet this Friday with Board Members Jed Rakoff ’64, David Gelber ’63 and Pam Wetzels ’52 to discuss the Coca-Cola ban before the meeting on Saturday.

“We hope to discuss our continued conviction that Coke should not be brought back to campus, that Coke has not significantly improved and that the investigations are not complete. Hopefully we will hear from them their reactions to our written response that we sent them two weeks ago and come to a better understanding … of where the Social Responsibility Committee is on this issue,” Schultz said.

Using talking points as a guide, students wrote letters to the Board of Managers to show their support for the Kick Coke campaign and voice their desires for increased transparency in the Board’s decision-making process. Kick Coke will present these letters to the Social Responsibility Committee during their meeting this Saturday.

“I think it is really disheartening that the Board may try to make a decision without the opinions of the students … It is important that we try to engage in things in the world without cynicism,” Addie De Angelis ’09 said.

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