Students from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, declared victory August 14, 2000 in a two month struggle to keep a catering company with ties to the forprofit prison industry from taking over the school's food service contract.

In July, school administrators announced that the college was in final negotiations with Sodexho Marriott Services over a 710 year contract. However, those negotiations broke down after a student group called "Not With Our Money" threatened to organize a boycott of school cafeterias.

Evergreen is the latest in a series of confrontations between SodexhoMarriott and college students, who say the company's violation of workers' rights and financial ties with scandalridden Corrections Corporation of America make it an unfit provider of campus dining services.

SodexhoMarriott's parent corporation, the Parisbased Sodexho Alliance, is a major stockholder in CCA, the worlds largest forprofit imprisonment corporation. Evergreen professor Peter Bohmer is convinced that student and faculty objections to the SodexhoCCA connection killed the contract."

"A large part of the Evergreen faculty, students and staff at this college find it morally reprehensible to buy food from a corporation so closely connected to the use of prisoners for profit. This victory is 100 percent due to student organizing, and to administration and company fears of massive protests in the Fall," Bohmer said.

Evergreen's Not With Our Money campaign has received broad support. In July, SodhexoMarriott was ousted from the State University of New York at Albany following studentled protests there.


Source: Not With Our Money Campaign press release.


For more info,contact Kevin Pranis at: kpranis@nomoreprisons.org