Despite promises to get fair trade coffee brewing at USC locations by late February, the places serving Starbucks coffee on the USC campus still haven’t been offering fair trade coffee.

What’s up with that?

I found out what’s going on last Tuesday, when I and Gloria, the Oxfam-USC instigator, went to meet with Lore, the senior manager of USC Hospitality Services.

Lore first told us that her office had gotten negative feedback about the fair trade coffee blend.

Really? said I. When was USC actually brewing Starbucks’ fair trade blend?

Early last semester, said Lore.

Really? said I, cuz I went into all the USC locations brewing fair trade last semester. And as of April 2006, fair trade coffee STILL wasn’t brewing.

Well, that’s the feedback I got, said Lore.

Can you tell us when these locations started brewing fair trade coffee, and what sort of feedback was received?

A direct quote from Lore: “I don’t have any quantifiable information.”

So — I said — are you saying that your store managers told you that students didn’t like fair trade coffee, but that you have no idea when and for how long these stores brewed fair trade coffee?

At this point, Lore apologized for not being more on top of things.

Luckily, Gloria and I came at least semi-prepared. We had signatures from 50+ people saying that they wanted fair trade coffee on campus. And we also clarified that we hadn’t made a huge effort to amass signatures, because we were under the impression that USC was willing to make the switch without a big student outcry.

Lore still fudged a bit, saying she wasn’t sure if faculty would be okay with the switch (my counter: faculty members have signed the petitions). But in the end, she said that an option for fair trade would be avaliable at every campus location that serves coffee by the beginning of the spring semester.

Cool, we said. Can we quote you on that?

Let me get back to you next week, she said, after I check with my store managers.

So we’ll be checking in with Lore next week.

What makes me a lil sad about this whole exchange is that — really — I’m hearing the same thing now that I heard a year ago: That USC’s willing to go fair trade if students don’t complain about it. I’m quite positive no one’s complained about it — mainly because I’m quite sure fair trade coffee was never even offered at these Starbucks locations. I also know that, in general, people don’t have very developed coffee palates. It’s unlikely that students would even notice that a blend switch had taken place — let alone complain about said blend switch.

The main resistance seems to be that Lore’s wary of making a sudden switch to all fair trade drip coffee without a trial period. And because store managers are used to only having 1 blend of drip coffee avaliable at any time, they’re likely to resist any mandate that’ll make them have 2 different blends (the “regular” blend and the fair trade blend) avaliable concurrently. Thus, store managers are likely to either never brew the fair trade coffee, or to never publicize the avaliability of fair trade coffee.

It’s sad, because Starbucks, afraid of being kicked off of campuses by 100% fair trade companies like Pura Vida, are offering their fair trade blends at the same price as the “regular” blends. This means that if USC wanted to get only fair trade drip coffee, they could just check a different box on the order form, with no financial consequences. Yet we’re still meeting a lot of resistance.

I’m going to try and involve some other student groups to make sure that students CAN get a fair trade option at every coffee spot on the USC campus by this spring semester.

Update, 12/19/06: USC students sent letters about the fair trade coffee issue to Hospitality services, and John Thacker, Lore’s boss, said that fair trade coffee will be brewing at Cafe 84 and Trojan Grounds — as of Jan. 8, 2007 — the first day of classes for USC’s spring semester

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