Marquette: Christianity Has Been Reduced To This.

T-shirts don't reflect "Faith Doing Justice"
By Staff Editorial

Mission Week. It's a time when we are supposed to step back and reflect on our roles as Jesuit university students in today's society. This year's Mission Week theme was "Faith Doing Justice," which, according to the Mission Week Web site, reflects

"our commitment to a Marquette education that integrates intellectual rigor, spiritual depth and concrete action for a more just and peaceful world."

We especially find this commitment to concrete action and activism interesting. Every day we see students living out the Jesuit mission by participating in service learning, volunteering with Midnight Run, or organizing student teach-ins and seminars for their peers, to name a few areas. This is also apparent in groups we see around campus such as JUSTICE and Ubuntu that promote social justice and emphasize the importance of fair trade. In addition, university coffee vendor,

Stone Creek Coffee Roasters offers fair trade and socially responsible options at all of the Brews on campus.

In light of all this work for justice, we found it quite bewildering that it is unclear whether the T-shirts being sold during Mission Week with the "Faith Doing Justice" logo were fair trade and sweatshop free. The T-shirts were ordered through Piranha Promotions, a company based in New Berlin, Wis. According to Stephanie Russell, executive director of University Mission and Identity, because the university considers Piranha Promotions a preferred company, it was assumed all orders would be free trade and sweatshop free.

However, the T-shirts were produced by Fruit of the Loom, a company known for having sweatshop factories in El Salvador.

Having students walk around in T-shirts with the words "Faith Doing Justice" on the front, that are not free trade or sweatshop free is grotesquely hypocritical, and an obvious poor representation of the phrase. We are sure that the sponsors of Mission Week had good intentions when deciding to sell these T-shirts. It should be noted that it is admirable that all profits will go to La Sagrada Familia, the Milwaukee Archdiocese's sister parish in the Dominican Republic. But Mission Week was not a time for the university to cut corners.

Special attention should have been given during this time to make sure T shirts were made in a fair and ethical environment

in order for Marquette to "walk the walk" in addition to just "talking the talk." By failing to do so, there was a lack of "faith doing justice."

Link (here)