Students boycott exploitative shopping

It's difficult to live life in Kirksville without shopping at Walmart, the only large retail store in town. But that's what some Truman students have chosen to do.

Freshman Ashley Jost doesn't shop at Wal-Mart. She doesn't order pizza from Pizza Hut or eat food from Kentucky Fried Chicken.

It started when Jost saw Robert Greenwald's documentary "Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price," a film portraying the corporation's questionable stances on workers' rights, environmental policies, and its negative impact on small businesses. Around the same time, one of Josts's friends introduced her to a book titled "The Better World Shopping Guide" by Ellis Jones, a sociology lecturer at University of Colorado at Boulder, which ranks companies from A to F based on how much they adhere to human rights, environmental protection, community involvement and social justice.

After reading the book, which gives Walmart an F, and watching the movie, Jost said she decided to stop shopping at Walmart because she said questionable stores like that not only exploit labor, wipe out small businesses, and pollute the environment, but  also keep their workers from unionizing and receiving proper benefits. She said her viewpoint was supported before coming to Truman by living in Chicago, where Walmart-goers most often travel to the suburbs to shop there.

Jost only shops at places within a ranking of at least a D in "The Better World Shopping Guide." She said she prefers buying clothes online, school supplies from either the Truman Bookstore or Walgreen's and food from the local Farmers' Market. She supports buying regional and supporting local economy, she said.

"Everything may be more expensive [when buying local] but I'm willing to go that extra $5 to support what I believe in," she said.

Jost is not the only Truman student against corporations like Walmart. Freshman Kayla Mills has been anti-Walmart   since she saw Greenwald's documentary in eighth or ninth grade. Even though she tries not to shop at Walmart, sometimes it is the only option in a small town like Kirksville. When she first came here, her GPS showed only two shopping centers in town, one of which was Walmart. She said she had no choice but to shop there, even though she was against it.

"It's hard to get people to care about it even when they do know the issues because Walmart's right there," she said. "It's easy. It's cheap. I guess they try not to think about the bad it causes."

Junior Dylan Gelbach has a different set of reasons not to shop at Walmart. During his sophomore year he looked at all the item he'd bought from Walmart and realized it was not the best quality. He said he might have been better off not buying them in the first place. He soon switched his spending to alternate stores such as Hy-Vee, Dollar General and local stores like Westlake Ace Hardware.   

Gelbach said he had heard his fair share of horror stories about Walmart. Several years ago his father, a unionist, told him a story about Walmart   meat cutters who had unionized. The company had fired all of them and had the meat shipped from Mexico instead.

"I don't care if other people shop there [Walmart]," Gelbach said. "I'm just choosing not to."

Senior Loren Billington doesn't see a reason to avoid shopping at Walmart based on the objections to it. He is not unaware of the stories about exploitation. He said he thinks many of the problems with Walmart are supplier related. He said it is the responsibility of Walmart suppliers to act ethically when making products. Walmart has a responsibility to set standards for their suppliers as well, he said. As for Walmart wiping out small town mom and pop shops, he said it's better to have one retailer with the advantage of doing a better job.

"Walmart is generally my choice retailer because they have what I want, what I need and the price is fairly reasonable," he said.