Last week’s sit-in by the Stanford Sweat-Free Coalition at President Hennessy’s office, the culmination of a year-long campaign pressuring the University to only sell apparel that had been produced in humane conditions, should be commended for its passion but questioned for its methods.

Similar to the Stanford Labor Action Coalition’s campaign for a comprehensive living wage policy for on-campus workers, Sweat-Free Stanford’s motivations are clearly principled. A commitment to fight worker exploitation is both socially responsible and in line with the policies already adopted by Columbia, Cornell, and Harvard. And given that Hennessy announced in a Tuesday op-ed that Stanford would sign on to the WRC (“Beyond Sweatshops,” May 29), Sweat-Free can be commended for their victory.

And yet, while the passion of these activists is not in question, we must question whether Sweat-Free’s actions last week were warranted. Hennessy has met with Sweat-Free representatives numerous times over the past several months and had proposed an additional meeting that would have convened this week. In his op-ed, he claims that he was already committed to signing on to the WRC and was planning to inform Sweat-Free organizers of this change in University policy at the missed meeting.

Sweat-Free Stanford may have felt that the University and Hennessy were “stalling,” as they wrote in their Tuesday op-ed (“Why we took over the President’s Office,” May 29). But given the repeated meetings and Hennessy’s recent acquiescence to one of their key demands, it doesn’t seem like legitimate channels for dialogue had been exhausted. This raises concerns, then, that their decision to have a sit-in was somewhat rash and counterproductive—it’s unclear whether Hennessy compromised because of the sit-in or in spite of it. By resorting to attention grabbing tactics like this, Sweat-Free implies that the Stanford administration responds to bad publicity but not to rational discussion. This only makes future cooperation between the administration and student groups more difficult. And in our experience, on this issue, University leaders have been fairly responsive.

Stanford will take a stronger position in support of the well-being of the garment workers it indirectly employs, which is great news for workers and Sweat-Free alike. Hennessy’s protests aside, the University did not actually take the initiative in implementing these reforms until after Sweat-Free took more drastic action. But by acting without meaningfully taking into account the consequences of their actions, the 11 activists who stormed the president’s office risked painting themselves — and more importantly, their cause — as more about the act of protesting than the results.