Activists at colleges take up cause of fair trade coffee

They push for switch by campus outlets to beans grown by poor farmers
By Steve Giegerich
Associated Press

Social activists on America's campuses have turned their attention to the fuel that keeps students going through all-night study sessions and gets them to class in the morning: coffee.

As many as 200 schools are responding to calls to change the way they buy coffee so that poor farmers, mainly in Central America, get a bigger cut of the profit from the beans they grow, activists say.

"You can make a difference for a child you've never met," said Cindy Megill, a junior at central Pennsylvania's Juniata College. "Or you can buy a cup of coffee with a corporate logo on it."

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