Vendor Relations Principles

Preamble

As a Quaker institution of higher education, Earlham expects its behavior as an organization in the world to bear witness to testimonies of peace, justice, respect for persons, integrity, and stewardship of the earth's resources.

In this statement we try to describe principles, arising from our values, which help us decide when we may ethically deal with a vendor and when we may not.

If money did not circulate, but passed from one hand to another until it disappeared into a black hole, then we could try to direct it so that it passed through no evil hands on its way to oblivion. But money circulates, and the spender cannot prevent it from reaching the hands of people who will spend it on harm and wrongdoing. As soon as we spend money, therefore, we are complicit in the business of others and support it at least in small and indirect ways. We conclude from this that our purchasing decisions cannot be pure. We cannot rise above all complicity unless we become entirely isolated. The question is not whether we ever subsidize any degree of harm and wrongdoing, but how direct is the subsidy and how grave is the harm. Unfortunately, both of these are questions of degree, which means that our decisions cannot have the clarity and certainty of simpler ethical decisions.

Continue >>