Today, thousands of student activists from around the country are cheering loudly — and for good reason.

A nation-wide alliance, the United Students Against Sweatshops, drove a persistent group of protesters to fight for the rights of sweatshop laborers who had been stripped of their jobs at a Russell Athletic factory after workers tried to unionize.

Yesterday, these students saw their tireless hours of protest and pickets bring formidable results. Yesterday, in an astonishing about face, Russell rehired the 1,200 workers who lost their jobs at the Honduran plant, showing that student activism reverberates loudly and makes a difference.

This wasn’t the first victory for this coalition of students. Colleges across the country felt the effects of these protests locally, as many campuses were pressured to cut their ties to Russell as a result of student outcry. In total, 89 colleges and universities severed ties with Russell costing the company millions of dollars in revenue.

Here at Cornell, we stood alongside the Cornell Organization for Labor Action and Cornell Students Against Sweatshops when they stood up to the administration and demanded that the Cornell Store take its business elsewhere. As one of the first schools to make this move, we applaud the student leaders here on the Hill for effectively mobilizing and shining light on this issue.

Russell’s concession is also a victory for the Worker Rights Consortium, which for over a decade has built the Designated Suppliers Program. The commendable group works with colleges and universities — 178 to date — to develop codes of conduct that the schools’ licensed suppliers of apparel and merchandise must abide by. Cornell is a part of this program and we hope that this victory is a signal to the University to remain steadfast in its efforts to extend its ethical guidelines beyond the University and across international borders.

While yesterday’s announcement from Russell should have appeased many activists’ concerns, we hope this victory only propels students and groups like the Worker Rights Consortium to continue to ensure that universities and colleges are doing their part to promote sound labor practices. There are hundreds of other Russells out there that have yet to be publicly reprimanded for their inhumane labor conditions and continue to operate using funds from institutions of higher education and elsewhere. We hope that COLA and CSAS recognize that battle is far from won and done.