Nearly 70 students attended the Brown University Community Council meeting Tuesday afternoon to support Real Food, an initiative students said they hope will increase Brown's investment in "healthy, local, fair, environmentally sound and humane" food. Chancellor Thomas Tisch '76 also spoke, addressing the Corporation's receptiveness to student input on University governance.
Real Food is comprised of members from four student groups - the Sustainable Food Initiative, Student Labor Alliance, Students for a Democratic Society and emPOWER. The group presented to the BUCC in the hopes that the council would endorse the movement and issue a recommendation of support to the University Resources Committee, which recommends Brown's annual budget. The URC would provide the necessary funding for the group to "purchase more local food and sustainable food," Natalie Jablonski '10, a member of Real Food, told The Herald.
Citing rising food costs, food insecurity and energy expenditure, the group emphasized the need for Brown to "become a leader in supporting an ethical and sustainable food system" in its presentation to the council.
"We'd like to see food here at Brown manifest our ethical values," Jablonski said in the presentation.
Brown became one of the first universities to buy local food when Brown Dining Services created its local food purchasing program, Community Harvest, in 2002.The University has since fallen behind its peers in terms of "real food," Jonathan Leibovic '12, also a member of the group, said in the presentation. Yale is spending 40 percent of its food budget on "real foods," and Princeton is spending 60 percent, he said.
Though Real Food has been working closely with Dining Services, it has yet to gain official institutional support. The group has three goals, which it hopes to implement with the URC's funding: to increase purchases of real food by 20 percent over the next five years, to create a team of eight paid student employees to work closely with Dining Services to research and organize the sustainable food purchases and to create a University-wide "food systems working group." The group would bring faculty, staff, facilities and students together to discuss actions the University should take in order to assess its impact on the food system, Jablonski said.
Leibovic said the initiative addressed two important challenges: "climate change and social justice."
Students sat on the floor at the meeting, holding signs that read "I am for real" and eating the apples Real Food left outside the door and also next to each committee member's place-card. Real Food also collected 1,300 student signatures supporting their initiative.
President Ruth Simmons said she would like to have Real Foods back to the BUCC to discuss it further.
Tisch, the chancellor, also spoke about recent student calls for greater representation and transparency from the Corporation, the University's highest governing body. Tisch added that the Corporation was "seeking input from a variety of places," and entertained suggestions for an open meeting, or a forum for discussion between the Corporation and interested members of the Brown community.
He added, however that the Corporation had to be careful not to "become a representative body."
Tisch also said he only learned recently that the Corporation's minutes had to be sealed for 50 years - an issue seized upon by SDS in its protests over the group's transparency - and promised to look into the matter.
