Scrapping 'Midnight Madness'

Did you hear about Midnight Madness this year? No, not the unofficial start of basketball at the first practice at the first minute of the season. We're talking about the madness of busloads of students shuttling between the IU campus and Wal-Mart for the opportunity to outfit their residence hall rooms and stock up on low-priced goodies.\nYou might have also heard about the protest by members of No Sweat!, a labor rights group, that blocked several buses both on Wal-Mart property and on campus to protest the shopping frenzy at Wal-Mart and IU's support of the business. As reported in the Indiana Daily Student Aug. 29, Bridget Kennedy, a No Sweat! member, said, "Wal-Mart consistently seeks the lowest common denominator, regardless of whether it is wages, workers' rights or environmental standards. Do we really want IU to send the message to its freshmen that we should abuse workers across the world?"\nKennedy might have a point.\nIs IU truly being a good steward to the Bloomington and Monroe County communities with its yearly support and endorsement of Wal-Mart during Welcome Week? \nWal-Mart, global business giant that it is, frequently comes under attack from labor organizations and watch groups for allegedly questionable business practices and ethics. For example, Walmartwatch.com documents a few of the many charges against Wal-Mart:\n• Failure to provide health insurance to more than half its employees (full disclosure: many are part-time).\n• Gender and racial discrimination evident in lower pay and fewer promotions for women and racial minorities.\n• Average pay for sales associates that is significantly below the poverty line and not enough to support a family.\n• Unimpeded growth that hurts locally-owned businesses and often forces them to close down.\nAnother watch group, wakeupwalmart.com, argues that Wal-Mart hurts local economies because lower wages mean workers have less money to spend on other goods and services. And the documentary "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price," released fall 2005, reveals that Wal-Mart faces lawsuits in 31 states (including Indiana) for wage and hour abuses.\nSo again, what message does IU send when it remains committed to the Midnight Madness "tradition" of bussing students, their credit cards and their cash to an establishment with sketchy practices? Does Residential Programs and Services (a sponsor of this event) provide students with supplemental information about these allegations, or do the administrators disinterestedly turn their heads and ignore these problems?\nAt minimum, IU should provide students with information on Wal-Mart so that they might make their own critical choices about whether to board the bus and support such an establishment. But the best scenario is for the University to sever this relationship and display a commitment to the surrounding community, rather than big business.