Alta Gracia employees earn a “living wage,” which is roughly three times more than that of comparable apparel workers in the country, and they work in a setting that has been designed with their safety in mind.

Cornell’s newly-founded Licensing Oversight Committee hit the ground running in its first meeting Tuesday, pledging to renew business relations with Russell Athletics and investigating the abuses alleged by two aggrieved former Honduran workers for Nike, both of whom spoke at the University on Tuesday.

As the afterglow of their success against Russell Athletic fades, University activists now face the prospect of dealing with what they view as a larger workers’ rights crisis with the corporate behemoth Nike.

Sweatshops are pretty easy to hate. They are crammed full of oppressed impoverished people working twelve, or fourteen hours a day in unsafe and unsanitary conditions. They get paid a dollar a day, and have no workplace representation. It’s dangerous, unhealthy, and exploitative.