Students in United Students Against Sweatshops, a national umbrella group for the movement, favor involving local non-governmental organizations and establishing an independent non-profit monitor.

PSLM members have asked the University to withdraw from the FLA. Because it has ties with industry, student activists say, the association is likely to do spotty and infrequent inspections, and might not have a strong enough commitment to disclosing factory locations.

"[The FLA's purpose] is to massage American consumers," Freeman says. "They're going to be as least good as they can."

Ryan says it is important to get independent information that is neither from companies nor from anti-sweatshop activists. He says he doesn't know whether to believe the companies, who say working conditions are good, or the students, who paint a darker picture.

"My hunch is that the truth lies somewhere in between, but we don't know."

But the attention students from Harvard and other universities have lavished on the sweatshop issue is starting to pay dividends, Wheatley says.

"Universities have a moral and social obligation to use the leverage they have to begin to make a change," he says. "And that's what they've already started doing."