On April 15-17, the Center for Principled Problem Solving’s (CPPS) Brown Bag Bonanza offered members of the Guilford community an opportunity to discuss new CPPS projects over packed lunches and sweets. The April 16 luncheon focused on a tentative Ethical Purchasing and Procurement Policy. The policy, born out of a Max Carter’s Quakerism class in 2006, would encourage the college to seek out companies and products that align with Guilford’s core values.
According to the CPPS Pilot Project Web site, http://www.guilford.edu/academics/cpps, “The goal of this project is to create an ethical purchasing and procurement policy for Guilford College that is consistent with Quaker values for social justice and environmental sustainability and that is consistent with good stewardship of college resources.”
Project participants, including students, faculty, and staff have researched similar programs at other institutions and from that research created a draft of what they would like to see at Guilford. Information from Brown University, Earlham College, University of Michigan, and other institutions were used in the March 26 draft of Guilford College’s Ethical Purchasing Policy.
In 2005, the Strategic and Long Range Plan (SLRP) identified the creation of an Ethical Purchasing Action Group as a goal to be met by the five-year SLRP deadline of 2010. The first section of the policy draft involves the creation of an Ethical Purchasing Committee. The committee and its duties are to be managed by CPPS.
“I think looking at this as a problem solving endeavor is trying to transcend the polarized positions of either ignoring this or ending up in an adversarial issue,” said Vernie Davis, professor and director of Peace and Conflict Studies and director of the Conflict Resolution Resource Center.
The Ethical Purchasing Committee will consist of members of the Guilford community, including administration, faculty, staff, trustees and students, both traditional and CCE. In addition to members with personal interests, the group will seek to involve people from appropriate departments such as business and environmental studies.
Responsibilities of the committee include researching companies, specifically those bidding for Guilford contracts, through questionnaires about their business practices and ethics. Criteria for companies include their history of nondiscrimination, collective bargaining, and labor standards such as wages and hours.
Upon completion of such research, the committee will report to the director of purchasing with contract recommendations. The director will make the final decision and the chosen vendor will sign a contract to follow the Ethical Purchasing Policy. Following creation of a committee, a test-run on the process and policy would be done. “(We’re going to) run a pilot test on some goods and some aspects of purchasing,” said senior Jennifer St. Mary who has been working on the policy. “From there (we will) edit the policy, then implement a workable policy that isn’t too lofty but still has our Quaker values at heart.”
Currently, work is being done to edit the draft, making it more specific and then it will be resubmitted to SLRP.
“(When the) initial draft was brought back from SLRP, there were some concerns that it was too vague – whose ethics, whose interpretations of Quaker values would we use,” said Max Carter, Chair of the Ethical Purchasing and Procurement Action Group.
The committee is slated to meet and resubmit the draft before the end of the semester.