Numerous Letters have been sent by alumni and parents to members of the Colgate University Board of Trustees. All have been ignored.
Colgate University President
Rebecca Chopp first year salary and benefits: $347,520; former president
Charles Karelis: $1,138,134
for two years work plus severance
pay
Offensive ads
USA Today 9/15/2003
Kids strolling the mall for back-to-school fashions may
have been struck by the look Abercrombie & Fitch is promoting: full-frontal
nudity for teenage girls. In store-window posters and on its Web site,
the popular clothing retailer features a girl from the waist up, with
only strands of hair covering her breasts.
Full frontal is not your style, 14 year-olds? Then try Abercrombie's ad
in which one nude girl nuzzles two guys.
Abercrombie is no stranger to selling sexy images to schoolchildren. Last year, it promoted thong underwear in girl's medium and large sizes with the words "eye candy" printed on them.
What is new is a campaign to stop the company's sexually explicit marketing tactics. This month, Dads & Daughters, a non-profit group based in Minnesota, launched an e-mail drive to shame Abercrombie's directors into opposing the company's ad strategy. Dads & Daughters President Joe Kelly figures some directors' ties to upstanding groups — Lauren Brisky is a Girl Scouts Council board chairwoman and John Golden heads Colgate University's board of trustees — will be embarrassed by any links to the ads. Company directors have refused to comment.
The group's appeal to the directors' standing as moral leaders is a twist on other activists' campaigns to change companies' policies on social issues. Among them: protests over the fact that oil companies Amoco and Atlantic Richfield were doing business with Burma's military regime.
Such efforts show that campaigns organized by private citizens can alter bad behavior without dragging in lawyers or government regulators to force changes.
Dads & Daughters has had several successes. Macy's cut its ties to a sexually explicit ad for a brand of blue jeans, and Campbell Soup scrapped a soup ad that the group claims glamorized girls' eating disorders. Yet for each tasteless ad campaign halted, new ones surface. The latest example: A British firm is marketing teen fragrances named FCUK Him and FCUK Her.
So far, Abercrombie isn't backing down despite negative publicity. Last year, when Christian groups launched a protest against the "eye candy" thong, the company refused to pull the product. Abercrombie spokesman Hampton Carney insists the thong was "totally appropriate" for children.
Whether Dads & Daughters' tactic works remains to be
seen. But to counter offensive ads aimed at children, shame is worth a
try.