Gulping down caffeinated soft drinks before two-hour lectures or all-night cramming sessions is a common survival tactic for America’s collegians. But a campaign to make Coca-Cola Corporation the target of a national student-led boycott could send campus Coke-drinking the way of the single-sex dorm. Coke stands accused of cracking down on union workers in its bottling plants in developing countries. Speaking to a group of college students and labor activists in Cambridge on Monday night, Harvard Progressive Student Labor Movement member Lara Jirmanus described the prospective boycott. "We know that it’s possible to change the practices of multinational corporations," she said, referring to successful student-led campaigns against sweatshops. "Watch out, Coca-Cola," warned Jirmanus. "You might be the next Nike."

On hand to describe the plight of Coke bottlers in Colombia was the president of the Union of Bottling Workers in that country, Luis Javier Correa Suarez. He was joined by Coke workers from Guatemala, Zimbabwe, the Philippines, and the US, all of whom talked about Coca-Cola’s systematic abuse of workers and human rights around the globe. Though all the workers had legitimate grievances against the company’s practices in their homelands, none was as dramatic as those raised by Correa. He explained that seven Colombian union leaders working for Coca-Cola have been assassinated by right-wing paramilitaries in recent years, all during periods of labor negotiation with the company. Correa alleged that the paramilitaries act in collusion with Coca-Cola plant management and with the tacit approval of the Colombian government. "The state and Coca-Cola Corporation are responsible because of what they do and what they have failed to do," Correa said. The murders have gone unpunished by the Colombian government.

Responding to a call from Correa’s union for external assistance, US-based labor groups filed suit against Coca-Cola last July in federal district court in Miami. The International Labor Rights Fund and the United Steelworkers of America charged Coke with complicity in the death of Isidro Segundo Gil, a trade-union leader who was murdered while working at a Coke bottling plant in Carepa, Colombia, in 1996. Calling the lawsuit’s allegations "reckless and irresponsible," Coke’s lawyers argued in a March 15 motion that there is no evidence of collusion between the company and the death squads.

Regardless of the case’s outcome, campus activists are prepared to take action. A form letter for students, which appears on the campaign’s Web site (www.cokewatch.org), contains a statement that should send ripples of alarm through Coca-Cola’s Atlanta headquarters: "As students, we make up a significant consumer base for Coca-Cola products. Coca-Cola is a fixture at many of our schools, and we are alarmed by these reports. As representatives of student organizations pledged to activism in the name of social justice, we will be informing our fellow students about what is going on at Coca-Cola."