Sodexho? Really? So it’s great fun complaining about Aramark. Their prices are lousy, they have a history of really upsetting labor relations, they don’t carry that one flavor of Ben & Jerry’s you really, really love at Weshop, and they don’t let you take food out of Mocon. They even contract with prisons! No, really, just two weeks ago, Aramark announced that their contract with the prison of Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, will continue through 2008. They’ve been contracting with that prison since 1999.
On the other hand, Aramark has officially severed its connections with the private, for-profit prison industry. According to then-CEO Joseph Neubauer, an Aramark representative went to a few meetings of the Association of Private Correctional and Treatment Organizations (APCTO) but the company had officially washed its hands of the whole business as of 2001.
Good thing the University is showing Aramark the door (reaching for the doorknob, at least). But the reason Joseph Neubauer was so eager to distance himself from APCTO four years ago was because of the horrid publicity one of Aramark’s main competitors had been receiving. See, the Sodexho Alliance also has a history with prisons. Only the thing is, they RUN the damn things. Sodexho officially divested from Corrections Corporation of America, one of the largest private, for-profit prison companies, in 2001, primarily as a result of student pressure. Up until that point, Sodexho had been CCA’s largest investor.
But as they were busily and noisily divesting from CCA (whose stock was tanking anyway), Sodexho was also busy buying up UK Detention Services and Corrections Corportation of Australia (now AIMS Corporation). Which is to say, they still run for-profit prisons, and seem proud of it. Typing in the following address: http://www.sodexho.com/NR/rdomlyres/66EC1CF1-20DA-44D2-A68D-FE92A7A2374A/0/MarketChampionen.pdf will provide you with a lovely, up-to-date brochure on Sodexho Corrections Worldwide, containing pictures of smiling inmates, who don’t look at all like the woman raped for five days while being transported between prisons by an all-CCA, all-male crew, back when CCA was a Sodexho Alliance subsidiary.
Including UKDS, AIMS Corp, and Sodexho’s subsidiaries in France and Chile, Sodexho is engaged in the building, financing, design, supply, maintenance, or management of 17 prisons. Sodexho wholly runs and provides “full correctional services” for 3 of these prisons, with a fourth under construction. Meaning by the time the prison in Peterborough, UK is completed, the Sodexho Alliance will have complete control over the lives of 2,744 imprisoned men and wome—oughly the undergraduate population of Wesleyan University
So in a choice between two Wesleyan alums and a company which ACTUALLY IMPRISONS as many people as are currently enrolled at Wesleyan, I think I’d rather go with the WesWings folks, even if their hummus wraps leave something to be desired.
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