For many, Earth Day 2008 was a celebration of environmental conservatism. For Bon Appetit, the catering service that provides food for Independent men at Sparks, it was an opportunity to promote the idea of reducing carbon emissions by removing products that significantly contribute to said emissions.
For a large number of students, it was an opportunity to protest Bon Appetit’s decision to enact “Low Carbon Day” - by eating a big slab of beef between two buns.
A swath of students from the Independent Men’s Association, Conservative Union and College Republicans sponsored this protest on the steps of Sparks Center Tuesday at lunch. Three grills provided juicy hamburgers and beans to a significant number of Independent Men who refused to eat at Sparks.
On a typical weekday Bon Appetit serves approximately 200 meals for students, faculty and staff. Tuesday they served approximately 50.
Chef Jordan Hall said the initiative for Low Carbon Day came from their corporate office.
“This is obviously coming from Palo Alto. It’s a corporate venture. It’s a corporate political agenda,” Hall said. “Bon Appetit as a whole is trying to reduce carbon emissions by 25%. [This is] because of all the greenhouse emissions that are being released, especially with beef on farms. It takes a lot to process them, so of course you have a lot of greenhouse emissions coming from that.”
Hall went on to say that education about going green is a difficult one – especially because of Wabash’s all-male environment.
“The education process is probably the biggest struggle here because it is an all-male college,” Hall said. “There’s not that female influence. Females are a lot more intuitive when it comes to things like being more up to par with what’s going on in the world [in terms of] going green.”
Brent Kent ’09, who organized the event, believed the message students had for the company was heard loud and clear.
“We suffer from lack of choice anyway,” he said, “and the new initiatives from Bon Appetit Corporate, which is more of an advocacy group than a catering company, is going to further limit our choices, so we’re telling them how we feel.”
Senior Bryce Chitwood, whose family runs a dairy farm in Southern Oklahoma, felt he had a personal stake in the discussion.
“It’s a fifth generation farm and for us farming is a way of life,” Chitwood said. “When an international organization like the Compass Group and Bon Appetit management do a program that’s going to reduce carbon by 25% and cut beef by 25%, that threatens my very way of life. That’s something I want to protect.”
Many students had different reasons for participating in the event.
“I believe Bon Appetit’s primary role is to provide us with tasty delicious food,” said Sean Crane ’09, “not to try to be an activist group and try to convince me to eat green and think locally.”
“I’m getting a burger today because I am protesting Bon Appetit,” said sophomore Jacob Grow, “more so what the organization stands for than the actual establishment here at Wabash. The food and everything has been pretty ridiculous the past couple of years – at least since I’ve been here. To throw away an entire day on veggieburgers and whatnot is a bad thing. Students don’t like it, we’ve said we don’t like it the past couple of years, and I think that this is what it’s going to take for them to get the point.”
Bon Appetit General Manager Mary Jo Arthur came out to the students eating burgers and gave them cards, which provided them with the opportunity to evaluate the day.
“I really want to figure out a way to find out what they like,” Arthur said, “what’s within our power to do while still maintaining the Bon Appetit initiatives.”
Ms. Arthur also noted that Bon Appetit at Wabash ignored many of the recommendations from corporate for the Low Carbon Day, which 400 Bon Appetit accounts participated in.
“Because of some of the feedback we got from the College, the CFO, and students,” Arthur said, “we haven’t incorporated our entire café into Low Carbon Day like the initiative directed that we should – we modified it. Many of our accounts across the country have no cheese on the salad bars today. Other places shut off the Coke machines. We didn’t do that because we know that there are certain things the students wanted, so we did adapt based on the feedback we got from them.”
She noted that there were absolutely no hard feelings toward the students who organized the event, and said a few of them even sent her flowers.
“We’re here for the students,” she said. “Our doors are open and we want them to come and talk with us and open up those lines of communication.”