HSSP Scholarship recipients Caroline Rozmus and Roman Concha receive scholarships.
By Andrew Mannion, Asst. Sports Editor & Emmanouel Sofillas, Staff Writer
Manhattan College has recently made strides in promoting fair trade values across campus, creating a student-run fair to show its commitment to this ethical trade practice.
Fair trade refers to products from companies that provide fair working conditions and wages to their employees.
The journey to Manhattan becoming a fair trade school began around eight years ago. Students and faculty in the O’Malley School of Business had the idea of establishing a student-run business to impart practical skills such as management, marketing and accounting to its students.
This led to the creation of “Fair Trade Fuel,” a pop-up sale managed by students, which held its first sale in 2016 and has been going strong ever since.
Aileen Lowry Farrelly, a professor at Manhattan College, has been involved in this initiative from the start and spoke about the college’s journey and the impact it hopes to have on both consumers and students.
“The college partners with vendors who provide Fair Trade Certified products, recognizable by the Fair Trade Certified logo on their labels,” Farrelly said. “To promote these values, the college conducts sales events during Halloween and Valentine’s Day, offering Fair Trade chocolates, coffee, and even roses.”
Farrelly hopes that this program will help students develop the vital skills they will need upon graduation, when they will become real-world business leaders and consumers.
“They learn why it’s crucial and hopefully become more aware of what they’re buying outside so they know it’s important to promote fair wages and fair working conditions for their employees and for our employees when they become business leaders in the future.”
Diving deeper into how the Fair Trade Fair has changed over the years, Kevin McGoldrick, a member of Alpha Beta Psi, spoke about his experience with the sales.
“It’s normal for us to organize sales based on the seasons,” McGoldrick said.“In the past, our focus has primarily been on selling chocolates, but as the years have gone by, we’ve diversified our offerings.” He also spoke about the delivery system Fair Trade has established over the years.
“Typically, the Fair Trade Fair involves some form of delivery where students can buy items to be delivered to someone else, and we used to have students go into different dorms on campus to make these deliveries,” McGoldrick said.
Nicholas Sgammato, another student running the Fair Trade sale explained how the fair operates and what the profits go to.
“We’ve been selling for about a week and pre-orders and then we’ve been on sale for two days,” Sgammato said. “Fair Trade is people getting paid the right way and treated the right way. We’ve just been promoting that and in the end, we’re gonna give away our profits to an organization, most likely, Fair Trade America.”