By Doug Cunningham

Students at Stanford University occupied the university president’s office on Tuesday, demanding that the school join the Designated Supplier Program designed to end the use of sweatshop labor to produce university branded clothing. The students vowed to stay in the president’s office until Stanford agrees to join the program. Mark Liu is one of the student protesters and we spoke with him by cell phone from the lobby of the Stanford President’s office.

[Mark Liu]: “There's eleven students from the Sweat-Free Stanford Campaign who are sitting in at the president's office because there has been no concrete commitments by Stanford to make sure that their clothing is not made in sweatshops. We want them to join the Workers Rights Consortium, which is an independent monitoring agency, and the Designated Suppliers Program - which gives the university the power to enforce a code of conduct to ensure that there is a living wage for workers, that there's not child labor, there's a right to unionize and safe working conditions."

The university had no immediate comment when contacted by Workers Independent News. United Students Against Sweatshops is running the Sweat-Free Stanford campaign. Liu says the anti-sweatshop campaign is an urgent human rights issue.