In response to a prolonged student campaign, the University announced yesterday it will join a more independent sweatshop oversight organization to monitor working conditions in factories manufacturing Harvard merchandise.

Harvard Students Against Sweatshops (HSAS) has lobbied the University for five years to join the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), a coalition of universities, students and labor experts that acts as a watchdog over factories manufacturing school apparel. Over 100 schools are already members of the WRC.

Harvard administrators had long maintained that Harvard’s participation in the Fair Labor Association (FLA), a group with a similar role that includes representatives of the apparel industry, was sufficient.

But HSAS and other labor supporters have assailed the FLA, claiming it is constrained in its oversight ability by its powerful industry contingent. Industry representatives hold six of the fourteen seats on the FLA board.

University President Lawrence H. Summers announced the move in a letter sent last night to HSAS members Gabriel A. Katsh ’04 and Emma S. Mackinnon ’05.

“Harvard must take responsible steps to ensure that apparel bearing its trademarks is not produced in sweatshop conditions,” Summers wrote in the letter. “The University would benefit from more information about and increased monitoring of factories located abroad.”

Katsh hailed the decision as a victory for workers rights.

“The University is finally acknowledging its responsibility in ensuring that the factories that make Harvard’s apparel are clean and safe places to work,” he said.

Mackinnon, who is also a Crimson editor, said that protracted negotiations between HSAS and Harvard lead up to this decision.

“It’s a huge victory for us, but it’s also a point we were getting closer and closer to,” Mackinnon said. “It follows the trajectory of the discussions we’ve been having all along.”

But she added that the announcement caught her by surprise.

A call requesting comment from a Summers spokesperson was not immediately returned late last night.

HSAS had not heard back from the administration after a meeting with General Counsel Robert W. Iuliano ’83 on Nov. 10, and Iuliano had declined to set a deadline for a University decision.

Mackinnon said she was never convinced that Summers personally supported WRC membership.

“One of the most surprising things is that Summers himself would do this,” she said. “One of the things we thought would be a barrier all along is that Summers’ economic beliefs didn’t seem to square with the WRC.”