However, the semester was coming to a close and the students had not achieved their goal. The class would soon be over and the efforts of the past three months would be lost along with it. However, this campaign was much more than a class assignment to the students involved in it. Soon the assignment was transformed into a new student organization, aptly named CHANGE. Founded by Dr. Coy's students, the professor kept his connection to the campaign by volunteering to be the faculty advisor for the new group. CHANGE soon attracted dozens of eager supporters, many of whom had never been involved in activism before.

Before long, CHANGE was making headlines. January 2001 marked the full-scale mobilization of the Campaign for a Sweat-Free KSU as CHANGE brought Jim Keady and Leslie Kretzu of the Olympic Living Wage Project to Kent. Keady had resigned from his coaching position at St. John's College in protest to the University's contract with Nike, a corporation whose infamous labor abuses were the subject of his master's thesis. He then joined forces with activist Leslie Kretzu and went to Tangerang, Indonesia where they attempted to live for a month on $1.25 a day, the average salary of an Indonesian Nike factory worker. When they returned to the U.S. they embarked on a speaking tour, exposing the truth about sweatshops to college campuses across the country. Their visit to Kent State helped boost CHANGE's campaign, and put them in the news for the first time with an article in the Cleveland Free Times titled: "Just Don't Do It: American Universities and Sweatshop Labor". By the end of the semester, CHANGE would be mentioned in over 11 news articles, not counting the frequent coverage they received from independent newsletters published by other campus groups.

Riding high on the success of the Keady/Kretzu visit, CHANGE returned to the bargaining table, and this time they were taken more seriously. University Counsel James Watson met with members of CHANGE on several occasions as they negotiated a three phase plan to implement CHANGE's demand for a "sweat-free" campus. The Administration had set up a committee the previous semester that was to research the issue. This committee had been kept anonymous until CHANGE threatened to formally demand the identities of the committee members via the "Sunshine Laws", a set of laws which state that any Ohio citizen has a right to access public information. Once the committee was revealed, Watson then agreed to work with CHANGE to create a second committee, a group of students and faculty members that would create the code of conduct itself.

Meanwhile, CHANGE continued to raise public awareness by setting up elaborate information tables and gathering more signatures on their petition. Members of CHANGE kept informed themselves by researching similar campaigns that had succeeded on over 300 other college campuses across the country, even building alliances with other groups in the region. This important aspect of the campaign included a delegation of CHANGE members being sent to Chicago for the Midwest Conference of United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), a national organization with chapters on college campuses across the country. At the USAS conference, CHANGE members met students who had faced some of the same challenges and learned valuable information about sweatshops, campaigning tips, and effective code enforcement through the independent monitoring organization, the Worker's Rights Consortium (WRC).

Back in Kent, CHANGE was given a unique opportunity to promote its cause when members of student group International Students in Education invited CHANGE to bring up the sweatshop issue at their annual "International Week" festivities. Members of Int'l Students had attended the Keady/Kretzu presentation in January and realized that sweatshop issues were very relevant to the concerns of their group. KSU President Carol Cartwright was scheduled to make a speech in the Reed Room at White Hall to mark the beginning of International Week. Unbeknownst to her or the rest of the Administration, CHANGE members had decorated the room with an elaborate display that illustrated the 6 steps of clothing production from sweatshop to campus. Prior to President Cartwright's arrival, CHANGE member Oren Casdi spoke to the audience for a half hour about sweatshops and the campaign for a sweat-free KSU. When Cartwright finally entered the room, she momentarily took a double take, then recovered and proceeded to give her feel-good speech about the virtues of cultural globalism while her audience stared expectantly, hoping for something more. International Week continued with videos and workshops about sweatshops, as the number of signatures on CHANGE's petition approached 1,000.

CHANGE's aggressive campaign had begun to show some results. Public awareness was steadily increasing while the Administration grudgingly began to work with CHANGE members to implement the formation of a code-drafting committee. But by mid-March, the campaign was besieged by frivolous delays on the part of the Administration. As Spring Break loomed overhead and fears arose that the campaign might be delayed to death, CHANGE decided that something had to be done. They stepped up the pressure at the bi-annual student open forum on March 15, 2001. CHANGE members made headbands with placards that read "Sweat-Free KSU" and passed them out to supporters at the Forum. They then asked several questions about the progress of the campaign, which the administrators present were unable to answer. They continued to up the ante on Thursday, March 22nd when CHANGE members and supporters occupied the Student Center Plaza, tying themselves to light poles with red tape to symbolize the bureaucratic "red tape" that was holding back the campaign. They passed out flyers explaining why they were protesting, and filled up more petitions.

The plan worked. Soon after the red tape incident, the Fair Working Conditions Committee was formed. Chaired by Counsel James Watson and made up of 2 students and 6 faculty members, including CHANGE member Ellen Zielinsky and Faculty Advisor Patrick Coy, this committee's task was to create a code of conduct that all KSU licensees would be required to follow. They would also recommend one or more monitoring organizations to be contracted to enforce the code.

CHANGE was relieved that the committee had finally been created, but they realized that if they didn't keep raising public awareness, the committee's work could be shot down instantly by a veto from President Cartwright, and the entire campaign would be negated. By now, CHANGE was the talk of the local activist community, so when an invitation was extended to all progressive organizations to participate in a major CHANGE event, many groups were eager to take up the offer. CHANGE members planned a week of events to raise awareness about the sweatshop issue and the labor movement in general, centered around a rally in the Student Center on April 4th, the 33rd anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. The assassination had occurred at a hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, after King had led a rally for striking sanitation workers (garbagemen). CHANGE co-sponsored the rally with campus group Student Anti-Racist Action and the local chapter of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). AFSCME is a national union for public workers, and is affiliated with the sanitation workers that King was supporting the day he was shot. AFSCME also represents some of the janitors and housekeeping staff at Kent State.

Student Labor Days of Action, as it was called, kicked off on April 3rd with a day of videos about sweatshops, free trade, and other related issues, as well as the award-winning documentary about the Civil Rights struggle, "By the River I Stand". The following day marked the rally. CHANGE members held up signs in the Student Center Plaza, surrounded by information tables from a plethora of supportive groups including Late Night Christian Fellowship, Amnesty International, and the Communist Youth Brigade, just to name a few. Many speeches were given, some by members of CHANGE and other campus groups, and others by union leaders, human rights organizers, and other outside groups. Labor Days of Action continued with workshops by nationally renown speakers, as well as the CHANGE sweatshop workshop. The week wrapped up with a benefit concert sponsored by Late Night Christian Fellowship. Local musicians performed on stage while donations from supporters helped reimburse CHANGE for the expenses of the past year.

After the on-campus intensity of the Labor Days, CHANGE focused for a while on global issues, namely the Free Trade Area of the Americas, an expansion of NAFTA which was being negotiated by world leaders behind closed doors in Quebec City, Canada, and promised to have devastating impacts on workers and the environment across the Western Hemisphere. One CHANGE member joined with other activists in the region to sneak past the border patrol (which was keeping out protesters) to Quebec, while the rest participated in a street theater event in Cleveland. They dressed as countries, corporations, and parts of nature, as they joined forces with unions, religious groups, and students from other colleges to stage a farcical race down the flats of Cleveland, symbolizing the "Race to the Bottom" that the FTAA promised to create as nations would compete for business by accepting the worst conditions for their workers, citizens, and environment.

Soon after CHANGE members returned to Kent, the Fair Working Conditions Committee announced that they had created a draft for an anti-sweatshop code of conduct. Everything was going according to plan. However, it soon became apparent that the committee was planning to endorse both the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC) and another organization called the Fair Labor Association (FLA) as monitors to enforce the code. As CHANGE members had learned at the USAS conference and confirmed from numerous other sources, the Worker's Rights Consortium was thought to be the best monitoring system available. The Fair Labor Association, on the other hand, had been exposed again and again as a fraudulent cover-up for corporations that didn't want to clean up their factories. In essence, the FLA was ensuring the continued existence of sweatshops. The committee argued that by joining both organizations they might receive information sooner and if the FLA really was corrupt, they would withdraw membership from them. But some members of CHANGE were concerned that joining the FLA would amount to giving a them a stamp of legitimacy and strengthinging their ability to falsely certify abusive companies as "sweat-free". After reaching consensus within the group itself, CHANGE raised their concerns at a public forum on May 2nd.

The next day, at the final committee meeting, CHANGE reiterated their concerns in a formal statement that urged the committee to pass the code of conduct and join the Workers' Rights Consortium, but not the Fair Labor Association. The intense efforts to persuade the committee paid off, and a recommendation was sent to President Cartwright to endorse the code of conduct with the WRC as its only monitoring organization. Now all that was left to do was wait and hope. They didn't have to wait long. By the end of that day, the code had been officially approved. Additionally, a partnership between the Kent State Fashion Merchandising Department and a non-profit organization called Equal Exchange had been given the go-ahead to begin planning a KSU line of Fair Trade clothing to benefit workers in Mexico. No one could have hoped for more.

The next day at the 31st annual May 4th Commemoration, CHANGE announced their victory to an ecstatic crowd. The congratulations began pouring in from students, alumni, faculty, community members, and other supporters. Jim Keady and Leslie Kretzu emailed their congratulations to CHANGE, as did representatives of USAS and other groups that CHANGE had worked with that past semester. The Campaign for a Sweat-Free KSU had won a stunning victory, and a new era of activism had been born at Kent State University. CHANGE was here to stay.