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American University Severs Food Contract Citing Social Responsibility |
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by AU SCASM
Email: SCASM (nospam) GOFAIRTRADE.NET (unverified!)
Phone: 202 885-3333
Address: American University CASJ, Kay Center, 4400 Massachusetts Ave, NW Washington, DC 20016 |
13 Apr 2001
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AMERICAN UNIVERSITY SEVERS FOOD CONTRACT WITH SODEXHO-MARRIOTT SERVICES CITING SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND TIES TO PRIVATE PRISONS |
PRESS RELEASE For Immediate Release: April 9, 2000.
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
Adam Choka: Cell: 973.454.1845, h: 202.364.6939
Kevin Owen: Cell: 202.271.2114
Kevin Pranis: Cell: (917) 860-4635.
Students Succeed: For-Profit-Prison Conglomerate Kicked Off Campus at American University
In the latest of a series of successful student campaigns to kick private prison profiteers off campus has prevailed at American University. In a letter sent via-email to all AU students today, Don Myers, Vice President of Finance and Treasurer announced that the contract with Marriott Food
Services will end this year, and that the ³social responsibility² of the multinational corporation played an important role in the administrations decision to severe ties with the Correctional Corporation of America¹s (CCA) parent company. On April 10, the university administration at Oberlin College, in Ohio announced that they to would end their contract with Marriott Food Services.
³We¹ve shown that student activists can hold prison profiteers accountable,² says Adam Choka, who was part of the student effort at AU to dump the private-for-profit prison¹s parent company. ³People who profit off of people¹s misery in private prisons will pay a price in lost student meal plan contracts.²
Background: The Campaign to rid U.S. Campuses of Prison Profiteers.
On March 28, 1998, the French multinational Sodexho Alliance (SA) took over the North American operations of Marriott Management Services from the Marriott Group, making it the largest institutional provider of food
services in North America, with $4.5 billion in annual revenues. The merger also tied student meal plans at the nations largest college campuses to the incarceration of people for profit, as Sodexho Marriott owns the largest
block of stock in CCA: the Correctional Corporation of America. Private prisons have been condemned for being poorly managed and largely unregulated, while private prison guards are underpaid, unorganized and
minimally trained. As a consequence, mistreatment of prisoners and escapes are all too common. In Youngstown, Ohio, mismanagement of D.C. prisoners have led to a series of scathing reports that have been issued by Congress,
and local corrections officials.
For the last two years, students cross the country have been part of a national campaign to kick Marriott foods off their campuses. The Not-With-Our-Money campaign have organized students to reject Marriott food meal plans, and have sponsored sit-in and protests across the United States,
Canada and Europe to compel universities to end their contracts with the private-for-profit prison company conglomerate. To learn more about the national Not with Our Money Campaign, visit their website at www.nomoreprisons.org/nwom.htm, or contact Kevin Pranis at (917) 860-4635. |
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