Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
By Jessica Cohen, Student Intern and Athlete at Switch4Good
When in college, students often rely on their university’s dining options to provide most of their meals. But this can become a problem when the food the university is serving does not line up with a student’s moral, sustainability, or food justice ideals. Luckily, changing the food landscape at a university is possible through direct advocacy from students to dining staff.
As a freshman at Cornell University who follows a plant-based diet free of all animal products, I was worried about whether the dining halls would accommodate my dietary choices. While I was lucky that Cornell had relatively good plant-based options (including diary-free New-York-style pizza!), I knew there was still a lot of progress that my university could make when it came to the food that was served to hit their sustainability goals, promote inclusivity, and accommodate all dietary choices.
To begin my advocacy efforts, I conducted research on my school’s dining offerings, food procurement process, sustainability commitments, and dining staff to determine areas for improvement, understand where the food comes from, learn about my university’s goals, and identify potential allies in the dining team. From there, I determined one primary area of improvement to focus on: at the time, Cornell had an up-charge of $0.70-$1 on plant-based milk. This meant that students opting for plant-based milk would have to pay up to a $1 extra per coffee (we’ve seen this with Starbucks, which Switch4Good has been fighting as well). While this may not sound like a lot to some people, students are often on a strict budget. Not only was this up-charge an issue for plant-based students, but it also an environmental problem and discriminated against students who are lactose-intolerant – which is most common among minority groups. I even heard one of my friends who is lactose-intolerant tell me she ordered her coffee with dairy milk because of the extra cost of the plant-based milk option, and she just suffered the physical consequences.
While I am not a coffee drinker, I was disheartened thinking of the impacts this choice made on my peers and wanted to do something to change it. After looking into my school’s goals and dining staff, my campaign partner (Lilly) and I set up a meeting with the Head of Retail Dining at Cornell (Meng-Wei Hsu), who oversees the campus cafes. We hoped we could work with him to solve this issue and remove the unjust up-charge on non-dairy milks. Luckily, Meng-Wei was very receptive to our ideas– he could relate to the issue because his son had severe allergies. He immediately worked to determine the best way to make this change work financially, realizing he could absorb the price difference by having more people bring reusable mugs (as cups were a significant cost).
Two weeks later, Cornell completely removed the up-charge on plant-based milk, requiring students ordering coffee to select between dairy milk or oat milk (at no additional charge). That week, I received texts from 6 different (non-plant-based) friends, telling me how excited they were that oat milk was finally the same price as dairy milk at campus cafes.
So how can you make this same change at your university? Here are a few tips for getting started with making changes at your university dining halls:
Before beginning your advocacy, it is imperative to conduct preliminary research. What is the current landscape of the university? What plant-based options are there, and what options are not currently served but should be? Where does your school’s food come from? Has your school already signed a pledge committing to a certain amount of plant-based food? Does your university have a climate goal or Climate Action Plan? Knowing the answers to these questions before the first meeting is vital to ensuring the dining staff takes you seriously, and knowing this information beforehand can save you time and ensure you are only asking questions that could not easily be found somewhere else.
To ensure the success of a campaign, it is necessary to find the right people, which in this case fall under two categories: teammates and allies. Teammates include people on your team, likely students but can also be staff, who work directly with you to create the change. The work should be divided up between people on your team. For example, you may have someone who leads outreach, sending emails to allies and people to whom you wish to advocate. Without a team dedicated to this campaign, it can be difficult to get all of the necessary work done, while being a full-time student.
Identifying allies is essential to ensuring a successful campaign, as they can provide support, resources, knowledge, and an additional voice. Allies can include a range of people and groups, including professors who are interested in or research sustainability, social justice, or plant-based food; student organizations to align with your goals; outside organizations who can provide additional resources and expertise; and dining faculty who are receptive to student campaigns. Building support for your campaign is crucial to ensuring its success.
While I was lucky to see the plant-based milk up-charge removed so quickly, most campaigns take a lot more work, including other campaigns I have run at Cornell. Often, campaigns require a lot of persistence, including following up with dining staff or potential allies when they do not respond to you, consistently checking in to ensure the changes are actually being implemented, and trying different approaches if your first approach fails. Before Lilly and I met with Meng-Wei Hsu, we met with multiple other dining faculty who were less receptive to our change, but through utilizing allies (such as a student who ran successful dining campaigns in the past) and being persistent, we were able to find the right person and create a real change.
When making small incremental changes, it can be easy to get caught up in continuing to push forward until you reach your end goal. However, before you push for the next change, it is important to celebrate small wins with your team and dining team. Every change takes hard work, so it is important to reward your team and allies for making that change to encourage them to make more changes.
Changing the landscape of your dining service can seem intimidating, but it is also quite rewarding. If you are interested in making a change in your dining service, or other forms of activism on your campus, check out our Campus Education page. You can download our brand new Student Guide to Switching Campus Dining for more in-depth information on running a campaign at your university.
We’ve listed our best dairy-free tips and products so you don’t have to go without.
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