Harvard formed the Independent UniversityInitiative (IUI) with three other schools in aneffort to bring new standards to the factorymonitoring process. But SAS members have objectedto the IUI's employment of Price WaterhouseCoopers, an audit firm, to do the monitoring.Students were not notified in advance of thedecision, and say they have concerns with thefirm.

Still, PSLM will continue to negotiate with theUniversity on an anti-sweatshop code, Morgan says.

"Because there are a lot of fine points andcomplicated issues, this needs to be a cooperativeprocess," he says, adding that he has beenimpressed by the Univerity's responsiveness sofar.

"We expect this to be a very long-term process,"Morgan says.

The international scope of the problem leadsSAS organizers to hope that Harvard will try toassert itself as a leader.

"Harvard's been saying since the beginning thatit wants to have a role as a moral beacon,"Vladeck says. "Allan Ryan thinks that the IUI is away that they can be unique."

Inch By Inch

The result CASV, another participant in theMarch 9 rally, gained from the administrationspeak to the types of changes Harvard is willingto make quickly--increased training for SexualAssault Sexual Harrassment (SASH) advisers andmore attention to issues of sexual violence duringfirst-year orientation.

The new women's center, however, will be a longtime in coming. Major policy changes--like theautomatic expulsion of students convicted of rapeor sexual assault--also need to wait for slowadministrative gears to turn.

"It's an area no one [among administrators]knows anything about," says Brina Milikowsky '00,one of the coalition's founders.

The CASV, formed after an undergraduate femaleaccused Joshua M. Elster, Class of 2000, of rapingher, spent the beginning of this year quietlyconducting a comparative study of Harvard's andother school's resources for sexual assaultvictims.

A February article in Perspective, in which twoHarvard rape victims complained that the schooldid not take the problem of rape seriously enoughand lacked adequate resources for rape survivors,sparked the coalition to action this spring.

The CASV presented the administration with alist of eight demands, distributed buttonsproclaiming that "Rape Happens at Harvard" andjoined in the March 9 "Rally for Justice."

But after a number of meetings with AssistantDean of the College Karen E. Avery '87 and, later,Acting Assistant Dean for Co-education Julia G.Fox, the group was able to win commitments fromthe University on some of its demands.

According to Fox, SASH counselors will gothrough a mandatory training program the weekbefore students arrive on campus in the fall, inaddition to the once-a-month meetings theycurrently attend. Some orientation material isalso being rewritten to include more informationon sexual assault resources.