Cornell meets UH Students Against Sweatshops 4.20.09

On Monday April 20, 2009 UH Students Against Sweatshops (SAS)
http://uhstudentsagainstsweatshops.wordpress.com/
was granted an audience with Dona Cornel, the University of Houston General Counsel. Dona has a nice life, she pulls down about a quarter of a million dollars a year in salary and has a staff of nine attorneys, one admin asst, one legal assistant and one secretary. Dona doesn't have to do very much actual work because U of Houston is a state school so they use the Texas Attorney General's (TAG) office to handle all the lawsuits UH (also known as 4th Tier U) gets hit with every time one of the crooked professors screws over a minority (which is what most of the pending and recent lawsuits are about) UH also hires private counsel when their poop gets so deep that the Atty General can't handle it.

Anyway Dona's in some serious hot water now because of a phony baloney Apparel task force "report" (actually a press release) that five faculty, one staff and one sell out student released last summer. UH SAS sued and it turns out (big surprise) that UH knew they were using sweatshops to make UH logo apparel. See Dona's so used to getting over on everyone that she thinks she can't be held accountable for her actions, especially when its mere students like us.

Well back on April 1, 2009 we filed the state lawsuit about the "task force," Dona kept answering our letterS with more and more preposterous statements. Usually Dona never even bothers to read our letters. But a couple days before this office visit we mentioned the lawsuit in a letter we gave her. Now her panties are all in a bunch because she finally realized that her job is to protect her boss, UH president Renu Khator from getting sued. So poor old Dona allowed the phony report to get out to the media with an equally ridiculous public statement from her boss, president Khator.

Dona never cared one iota about women (90% of sweatshop workers are women) sewing UH logo apparel but it's clear she cares about keeping her job. After all she's in her early fifties and although Houston is the 4th largest city in the country, the legal community isn't huge. So when she gets fired after we win our lawsuit it will be hard for her to find another job in Houston, especially in this economy.

Stay tuned for the next episode of Students Against Sweatshops vs. crooked lying lawyers.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• UH SAS
• Dona Cornel
• University of Houston
• Brendan Laws
• UH General Counsel