{"id":1443,"date":"2025-04-23T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T12:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/entouragecover.com\/?p=1443"},"modified":"2025-04-28T14:41:34","modified_gmt":"2025-04-28T14:41:34","slug":"students-finally-get-nyu-to-talk-about-nike-after-months-of-protests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/entouragecover.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/23\/students-finally-get-nyu-to-talk-about-nike-after-months-of-protests\/","title":{"rendered":"Students finally get NYU to talk about Nike after months of protests"},"content":{"rendered":"

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NYU is putting off student demands to terminate its contract with Nike as the university faces issues related to immigration and research funding, administrators said in a meeting with student organizers after a <\/span>rally last Monday<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

David Ramirez, a member of NYU Students for International Labor Solidarity, said the group spoke with Owen Moore \u2014 the associate vice president of campus services \u2014 for around 25 minutes in his office after they approached him at the rally outside of Kimmel Center for University Life. At the demonstration, nearly two dozen members demanded that the university end its partnership with Nike due to alleged wage theft in a Thailand factory. Ramirez said Moore told the group that NYU is preoccupied with other urgent issues \u2014 such as battling the Trump administration\u2019s crackdown on higher education \u2014 and is unable to look into the issue at this time.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a little bit disappointing to see that he doesn’t have that sense of urgency,\u201d Ramirez said. \u201cNYU already renewed their contract with Nike too, so that’s already another year of us being associated with Nike.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Since October 2023, the group has held several on-campus demonstrations demanding Moore and athletics director Jake Olkkola cut the university\u2019s contract with Nike. Nationwide demonstrations against the company follow the NYU-affiliated Workers Rights Consortium\u2019s 2021 report, criticizing Nike of withholding <\/span>over $900,000<\/span><\/a> in employees\u2019 wages at the Hong Seng Knitting factory in Bangkok, which makes Nike garments. In response, the company stated that although temporary workers are legally entitled to receive partial wages, <\/span>\u201c<\/span>most workers volunteered to take unpaid leave<\/span><\/a>\u201d in 2021.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Moore and Jason Pina, <\/span>the senior vice president for university life, sent a letter to Nike directors last year seeking a \u201cfactual rebuttal\u201d from the company. Nike told the administrators that \u201cbased on its own and third party investigations, it has not violated any agreements or laws.\u201d Ramirez said that after the rally last week, Moore directed NYU SILS members to speak with the Student Government Assembly or NYU Athletics this time to better advance their efforts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt confused me because he is in charge of the contract licensing at our university,\u201d Ramirez said. \u201cEven though he can\u2019t snap his fingers and automatically cut the contract, he does have massive influence to push the senior leadership team to cut the contract.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The group began <\/span>delivering weekly letters<\/span><\/a> along with small treats such as candy to administrators \u2014 including Moore \u2014 at the beginning of this year to consistently push for an end to the partnership. Ramirez said that on St. Patrick\u2019s Day, the group delivered an Irish poem, Lucky Charms cereal \u201cwithout the charms\u201d and a potato with a Nike logo on it to Moore.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was glad we were able to get a meeting, but we have to rethink about how we\u2019re going to cooperate with him,\u201d Ramirez said. \u201cEven though this was a bump in the road, this is definitely still progress in the sense that we communicated with admin.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Contact Amanda Chen at achen@nyunews.com.<\/em><\/p>\n

This story Students finally get NYU to talk about Nike after months of protests<\/a> appeared first on Washington Square News<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NYU is putting off student demands to terminate its contract with Nike as the university faces issues related to immigration and research funding, administrators said in a meeting with student organizers after a rally last Monday.\u00a0 David Ramirez, a member of NYU Students for International Labor Solidarity, said the group spoke with Owen Moore \u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/entouragecover.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1443"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/entouragecover.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/entouragecover.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/entouragecover.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/entouragecover.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1443"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/entouragecover.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1446,"href":"http:\/\/entouragecover.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1443\/revisions\/1446"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/entouragecover.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/entouragecover.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/entouragecover.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/entouragecover.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}