Word: grapes
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More students voted in last week's Great Grape Referendum than in last year's Undergraduate Council presidential and vice-presidential elections, 50 percent to 43 percent. Whether to take this as an indication of greater student ardor over grapes or greater apathy toward the council is up for debate...
...give the non-voters a bit more credit, it was easy to become disenchanted with the grape vote, with the debate clouded by disputed facts and allegations of impropriety. The pro-grape forces were led by a student whose family owns a grape farm--big surprise which side he was on--and used catchy slogans about student choice to obscure the labor issues at hand. The anti-grape forces relied on dated literature supplied by the United Farm Workers (UFW), a union that not only has reason to be biased but which has itself all-but dropped the grape boycott...
...when it came down to it, the debate was about something not so complicated at all: on whose side Harvard College would ultimately stand--to whom we would give the benefit of the doubt. Would we side with the UFW and students concerned about labor issues, agreeing to forgo grapes on the likely premise that worker conditions had not yet improved sufficiently in California's fields? Or would we subscribe to the Coalition's claims that grape-pickers were doing just fine and, assuming the protesters were misguided reactionaries, demand our grapes...
Other students also expressed concern for the safety of the grape workers...
...vote yesterday would allow Harvard Dining Services to serve grapes of any kind, effectively ending a 1992 ban on table grapes. A "no" vote would keep the fruit out of dining halls, unless HDS was able to secure a contract with an organization supported by the UFW, which is fighting for better wages and treatment for grape-pickers...