Knight announced on April 24, 2000 that he would no longer donate money to the University of Oregon. This was an unexpected move by Nike's high profile executive and alma mater of the University of Oregon. Over a quarter of a century Knight had donated more than $50 million of his personal fortune. This went to improving athletic facilities, and providing apparel. .
However, Knight felt that Oregon had broken a chain of trust when they decided to join the Worker Rights Consortium, as opposed to the Fair Labor Association. Oregon did this in response to student activists, and faculty that wanted to take steps to ensure that products sold in the campus store, especially university-logo apparel, were not manufactured under sweatshop conditions. .
The cause of this rift between Nike and Oregon was the fact that Nike was a vigorous supporter of the FLA, which was imposed under President Clinton's policies. The fact that Oregon had decided to support a different Labor rights group was seen as a slap in the face of Nike, which had donated a lot of money over the years in support of the school. Nike felt that the university should have followed the FLA.
The decision of the University to support the MRC was due to the fact that the students felt that the FLA wasn't doing enough to ensure fair labor practices overseas. Students felt that Nike was exploiting overseas workers for cheap labor, and were forcing them to work in unhealthy, and unsafe conditions. This held some truth, as seen in Nike's factory in South Korea, where workers were suffering from eye, skin and throat irritations; damage to liver and kidneys; nausea; anorexia; and reproductive health hazards through inhalation or absorption through the skin. Since almost all of Nike's production came from overseas, they depended upon subcontractors to oversee all of these issues.
Nike responded to this by attempting to improve their labor practices it its overseas subcontractor facilities, as well as the public perception of them.