Dean's office listed on auction site

By David Enders

Daily Staff Reporter

Although students may joke that the University administration is for sale, protesters occupying LSA dean Shirley Neuman's office put a whole new spin on that idea yesterday when they put the office up for sale on eBay, the online auction house that offers everything from football tickets to movie memorabilia.

The description of the item read as follows:

"University of Michigan Students Seek buyer for Dean's Office. Wednesday morning, twenty students began a 'sweat-in' occupation of the Dean's office at the University of Michigan, protesting the University's failure to commit to ending their ties to overseas and domestic sweatshops that produce University of Michigan apparel. The students are making U-M apparel in their mock sweatshop and they will not leave until President Lee Bollinger commits to ending the real UM sweatshops or UNTIL THEY SELL IT ON EBAY. SOLE, the student group taking over the office, is asking $3.60 for the office because sweatshop workers work for absurdly low wages, and we're selling like absurd students."

By the time eBay removed the item from its site early yesterday afternoon, more than 20 people had bid the office up to $5,200. eBay spokeswoman Kristin Seuell said prank items are put up for auction on the site "very rarely."

"It's against eBay policy and obviously it's used to receive publicity," Seuell said.

Seuell also said Students Organizing for Labor and Economic Equality member Adam Kramer, who put the item on the Website, could be suspended from using eBay.

Kramer, an LSA senior, said the group wanted "to make a satirical comment" and "bring it into the realm of the Internet."

"The motivation behind it was to put it up for auction at an absurdly low price, like the absurdly low wages of sweatshop workers," Kramer said. Columbia University freshman Micheal Castleman was one of the bidders who made an offer on the dean's office.

"I bid $8," he said. "Not a lot."

Castleman said he made the bid to show his support for the students sitting in at the Neuman's office but did admit he also thought the idea was funny.

"I don't know where I would put it," he said. "We have enough administrative offices here."

The Rev. Chris Cappuccio, a UNIX administrator in Bend, Ore., offered $56 for the office. "Why not?" he asked. "I just wanted to do it in the spirit of the protest. It seemed like the right thing to do."

Not everyone who made bids did so to support SOLE's cause. "I think the sit-ins are ridiculous and a waste of time. I have no sympathy for them," Matthew Jachimstal, a student at Michigan Technological University, said in an e-mail. "I bid on it because I wanted to see how high it would go before eBay removed it as an invalid item."

Jamichstal said he came across links to the auction and the Webcam that SOLE set up in Neuman's office on Michigan Tech newsgroups.

- Daily Staff Reporter Erin Podolsky contributed to this story.