Coca-Cola may soon become a soda non grata at New York University.

The university says it will banish Coca-Cola products from its vending machines and cafeterias unless the beverage giant submits to an investigation into allegations of human rights violations at bottling plants in Colombia.

NYU has given Coca-Cola until December 8 to yield to the school’s demands. The ultimatum was approved on Thursday by the university senate, which deliberates on university-wide policies. It is composed of faculty members, deans, administrators, and students.

“Students don’t feel Coke has come far enough along,” the librarian for social work at NYU’s Bobst Library, Arthur Tannenbaum, said. He is chairman of the public affair committee of the university senate.

Labor groups for years have accused the soft-drink company of failing to protect employees at Colombian bottling plants run by Coca-Cola FEMSA. The Coca-Cola Company owns 40% of Coca-Cola FEMSA, Latin America’s largest soft-drink bottler, according to Hoover’s, a company that compiles corporate profiles.

One of Coca-Cola’s loudest critics, the Campaign To Stop Killer Coke, based in Brooklyn, says paramilitary groups have murdered eight labor leaders at Coke bottling plants in Colombia since 1989. The group accuses plant managers of cooperating with the death squads to quell union organizing. More than 2,000 people are employed at six Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia, according to the company.

On its Web site, Coca-Cola denies the allegations and says third-party investigations have cleared the company of wrongdoing. The Web site points out that a federal judge in Miami in 2003 dismissed the American company from a lawsuit brought by the International Labor Rights Fund against a Coca-Cola affiliate. The case against the affiliate is still pending.

Coca-Cola says its bottling partners have made agreements with unions representing Colombian bottling plant employees to provide them cell phones for emergencies, transportation to and from work, and safer housing. Officials at the company could not be reached for comment yesterday.

College students have latched onto the issue in the last two years, and about 10 schools have banned sales of Coca-Cola products, including Union Theological Seminary in New York City and Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson. Rutgers University switched over to Pepsi from Coca-Cola in June, but officials at the New Jersey public school said Pepsi made a better offer and that the decision did not have to do with the allegations against Coca-Cola.

“We’re responding to a call from an international movement,” a junior at NYU who has campaigned against Coca-Cola at the university, David Hancock, said. He accused Coca-Cola of “actively opposing any transparent review of its bottling plants.”

NYU’s university senate is demanding that Coca-Cola cooperate with an investigation by the Worker Rights Consortium, a group affiliated with more than 100 college administrations that helps schools comply with their codes of conduct on labor policies. The senate in March wrote to Coca-Cola’s chairman, E. Neville Isdell, warning the company that the university was considering a boycott.

Coca-Cola has questioned the objectivity of the consortium and says auditors hired by the company to conduct a review of its Colombia plant found no evidence to support claims that the company is responsible for human rights violations. The audit, the results of which were released this year, was conducted by the Cal Safety Compliance Corporation.

It would take four to six weeks to carry out the ban on Coke, according to an e-mail message sent by the vice president for auxiliary services at NYU, Robert Kivetz, to student activists. The process would involve removing Coke products from Aramark and CulinArt retail operations and more than 100 vending machines. The ban would include all Coke products, including Minute Maid juices and Dasani water. NYU does not have an exclusive contract with Coca-Cola.