Undergraduate Is First UB Recipient of UUP's Eugene Link Scholarship

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Paul Zarembka, Ph.D., professor of economics at the University at Buffalo, says his former student, Daniel Cross of Hamburg, "is an outstanding student and a human being committed to economic justice, and this award is richly deserved."

Cross is the first UB recipient of the annual Eugene P. Link Scholarship presented by United University Professions (UUP), the SUNY-wide faculty/staff labor union.

The $2,000 scholarship is awarded to an undergraduate student in a SUNY school with a grade point average of 3.75 or higher who "exhibits a dedication to the goals of the trade- and labor-union movements."

A 1999 graduate of Hamburg High School, Cross expects to graduate from UB with a double major in history and Spanish in May 2005. He is the son of Michael Cross and Sheree Canfield of Hamburg.

His application was supported by several UB professors including Zarembka, Ruth Meyerowitz, professor of women's studies, and Kandace Lombart, former adjunct professor of English.

"This is a true honor," Cross says, "and a huge boost to me, especially after having just emptied my bank account to pay for summer classes."

Cross founded "UB Students Against Sweatshops," which protested UB's contract with the New Era Cap Company of Derby, whose workers struck the company in 2001-02.

Led by Cross, the group served as a conduit for communications between the striking New Era employees and 13 universities nationwide -- UB was not among them -- that suspended their contracts with the company. The suspension remained in effect until New Era agreed to a contract with its workers and corrected safety violations cited in a 2001 report critical of its labor record.

The student organization continues to monitor UB contracts to insure that companies doing business with the university respect their workers' rights.

After he graduates, Cross says he plans to take a few years off from school to work as a union organizer and then return to graduate school to study labor history.

The scholarship was established in the mid-1980s to honor Link, now professor emeritus of history at the State University of New York College at Plattsburgh. He taught in New York's state university system for 35 years and helped to found UUP.