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Housing and Hospitality Services should hire more interns to increase student education of sustainable food choices

By Charley Guptill

March 4, 2012 11:32 p.m.

Although for many of us ramen and popcorn might be staples of our diet, eating healthily is important for college students. Our minds and bodies need the proper fuel from the healthiest and, ideally, the most environmentally friendly sources.

Currently, more than 90 percent of dining hall food comes from non-sustainable food sources ““ that includes pesticide-treated vegetables, genetically modified foods and antibiotic-treated meats, which may have a negative impact on our health.

The good news is, UCLA is making progress. By 2020, 20 percent of UCLA’s food purchases will come from sustainable sources.

This goal is part of the UC-wide Foodservices Sustainability Policy, which details a number of measures each UC campus needs to take to reach the 20 percent goal.

Housing and Hospitality Services, which supplies all the food to the Hill’s dining halls, is on track to reach the goal, but as they make more progress, the mission of realizing sustainability without much added cost becomes more difficult, said Robert Gilbert, a sustainability coordinator at UCLA Housing and Hospitality Services.

The majority of work to progress dining hall sustainability is being done by two full-time staff members and an intern who work in the Housing and Hospitality Services office. While the staff has already implemented new policies, such as serving only cage-free eggs and offering organic salad bar choices, they can only influence and implement policy so much.

What the Hill’s quest for food sustainability currently lacks is a higher level of student input that would greatly augment the office’s success.

While there are students interested in advocating for more sustainable food choices, there are not many of them. An extended engagement with the Hill’s population could influence dining policy.

To accomplish this, a new team of unpaid interns should be added to the Housing and Hospitality Services office. The interns would focus solely on garnering greater interest and support for sustainable dining policies and practices.

The student support generated would result in meaningful change as student input can have a large impact on dining policy through avenues such as the On-Campus Housing Council’s Policy Review Board. Every week, dining managers listen to students’ concerns at the Policy Review Board meetings. The managers then respond to the student input and work to enact the changes suggested, said Becky Miller, a sustainability analyst at UCLA Housing and Hospitality Services.

Issues not consistently given much attention from students, like sustainability, may be lost in this process and fail to be addressed by the board, resulting in a lack of policy change.

Perhaps the more deep-rooted problem is a lack of widespread interest in sustainability, as many are unaware or uninterested in the problems associated with non-sustainable food.

To generate a large amount of concern about sustainability on the Hill, the residential population needs to be educated about the problems and dangers of eating foods treated with antibiotics and pesticides.

Housing and Hospitality Services could accomplish this by hiring more interns and having the intern team create a campaign that reaches the entire Hill population.

Similar attempts to garner student interest in sustainability have happened. Students have been surveyed about their knowledge of organic foods and the health implications of eating organic. Education pieces on sustainability have been placed in the table tents that go on every dining hall table. These projects, while beneficial, did not have a large enough impact on the residential population.

The project should focus on educating students about specific health, social and environmental benefits associated with eating sustainable foods and on ways of connecting with Policy Review Board representatives to ensure students start caring and expressing their concern.

By having a new group of interns focus exclusively on a campaign to educate residents about sustainability, their efforts would be more effective and reach a larger number of students.

The internship would not only benefit the Hill but also the students involved.

Do you think Housing and Hospitality Services needs more interns? Email Guptill at

[email protected]. Send general comments to [email protected] or tweet us

@DBOpinion.

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