The recent agreement between the University of North Carolina and Nike over athletic apparel is a remarkable and positive move toward improving labor rights.

There has been a long history of Nike’s apparel manufacturing factories in countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia exploiting workers with poor conditions and substandard wages.

North Carolina’s eight-year, $28.34 million agreement with Nike requires the company to expand the Fair Labor Association’s monitoring program and to disclose the locations of the plants where game uniforms are manufactured. The deal is similar to MSU’s five-year contract with Nike except game uniforms are not specifically mentioned.

Another part of Nike’s North Carolina agreement finances a trip to a manufacturing plant for a university group and hosts a forum on labor issues with the university.

Nike and the University of North Carolina deserve accolades for putting together this groundbreaking agreement. We hope this is only the first of many steps toward improving labor rights with companies around the world, and it’s good to see the change beginning with our nation’s universities.

Especially deserving of recognition are the members of student groups advocating an end to sweatshop labor. Without their push for reform the issue would not have become a topic of discussion. We hope they continue working to increase awareness of labor conditions and create reform in the way universities deal with companies on their employment practices.

MSU and other universities should feel irresponsible as places of higher learning if they allow themselves to become aligned with corporations that take advantage of foreign labor and factory sweatshops without regard to workers. An important lesson to learn is that the most lucrative agreement is not always the best one.

The time will come for MSU to renegotiate its contract, now in the second year. When that happens, the university should push for a deal similar to the one achieved by North Carolina. Nike officials say the qualifications in North Carolina’s contract will not automatically transfer to MSU or any of the 300 other colleges Nike deals with.

North Carolina received the deal because its apparel brings in about $6.7 million annually, one of the top three highest-selling in the country. MSU is about $5 million behind that. But as a school with the same ideology as North Carolina, MSU should strive to create a similar code of conduct as soon as it can.

The university needs to be a leader in social responsibility. Building on this new agreement, MSU can easily put itself in a position to greatly advance labor rights, and when the opportunity to do so arises, it would be inexcusable to let the chance slip by.