PepsiCo criticized by Berkeley students trying to oust it from their campus

Purchase-headquartered PepsiCo Inc. (NASDAQ:PEP) has found itself under attack by some students at the University of California, Berkeley who are objecting to a new contract between the company and the school.

According to a report in the Daily Californian, PepsiCo and the school’s leadership announced the renewal of their 10-year pouring rights contract (PRC) partnership that detailed the goods and services that the company will be providing to campus-operated settings.

However, this news received a rebuke from Karis Polfer, a campus student and a co-director of the Pour Out Pepsi initiative, who claimed the PRC does not represent student values.

“This contract does not align with these values because students are in no way involved in the decision-making process and are continuously ignored and pushed to the side,” Polfer said. “Students have constantly advocated for healthy beverages provided by local and sustainable providers.”

Polfer added that most students were unaware that the PRC contract was being negotiated, and she complained it allegedly limits student athletes will be seen as ambassadors for PepsiCo products because they are the only items for use on campus.

“I don’t think the lack of transparency is fair to the students let alone being tricked into funding a multi-billion dollar monopolistic corporation,” Polfer continued. “With this agreement, this promise has been completely thrown under the table. This is hypocritical, highly unethical, and controversial seeing that Berkeley loves to promote greenwashing on campus.”

Polfer stated she wanted to remove PepsiCo partnerships from all University of California campuses and was hopeful to gain both student and community support – along with input from lawyers who could help void the contract.

However, Russ Chung, campus chief procurement officer and co-chair of the University of California’s Sustainable Procurement Working Group, said PepsiCo is in alignment with the school’s positions on the environment, labor and human rights, ethics and sustainable procurement.

“With Pepsi, I strongly feel it is a better choice to collaborate with this global company that will continue to exist well past this contract life,” Chung said in a statement. “We seek continual sustainable improvement and change using our full UC system sustainable advocacy, sustainable procurement scorecards, and the voice of the customer (Cal and UC).”