Salesforce and CEO Marc Benioff are winning some love among progressives, especially since going all in ($7 million worth) to support San Francisco’s Prop C business tax to fund housing and homeless assistance.
But one issue in particular dogs the company–its decision to maintain a cloud services contract with U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, sister organization to the family-separating ICE. Tech workers, including Salesforce employees, have petitioned against the deal. And now potential future tech workers and employees have joined in. Students at Stanford have begun a petition pledging to not interview with the company unless it drops the CBP contract.
Related: Anti-ICE protesters descend on Salesforce Tower in San Francisco
“Stanford being the CS [computer science] and Silicon Valley capital, we thought we could raise more awareness on campus,” says Sarah Tran, a sophomore studying symbolic systems. “Salesforce is a big internship company. A lot of people I know intern there.”
Over 60 people have signed the petition as of this writing. Tran says that she and co-organizers have verified that the signatories are all Stanford students, but not all are in computer science or other technical fields.
I reached out to Salesforce for comment and will update if I hear back.