On March 27, Students for Economic Justice met with the president and administration in its continuing struggle to get MSU to cease its utilization of sweatshops. At the meeting, a student asked if he could record the meeting and President M. Peter McPherson did not allow this.

As stated in The State News story “McPherson OK’d infiltration” (4/13), when asked by Michael Krueger if McPherson knew about the undercover police investigation into SEJ, he laughed and denied knowing anything about it. There are several witnesses to this statement. Yet he admitted 16 days later to The State News that he had, in fact, been knowledgeable about the investigation and he had, in fact, approved it.

Students for Economic Justice has had several meetings with the administration. We have educated ourselves on the issues and politics of sweatshops, driven by a passion and desire to advocate for those whose voices are being stifled, and whose lives are being exploited by the corporate machine of America. We have been going about this in a very constructive manner, by setting up continuous meetings in hopes of coming to an agreement with the administration. Not only has the MSU police force unjustly infiltrated our group, our president has flat-out lied to us.

As a student at MSU, I’m extremely disappointed, ashamed and, most of all, angry this is a real situation at MSU. Not only has the administration lost my trust, but my respect as well. McPherson has demonstrated an outright lack of honesty and the student body should not take this lightly. This should be a wake-up call to our community: The president of our university has been dishonest - something is not right.

HopeAnne Koskey
social work senior