BINGHAMPTON, N.Y. — With Sodexo’s contract up at the end of the year, students rallied in the Glenn G. Bartle Library entrance hall in hopes of convincing Binghamton University campus officials to adapt healthier and more ecologically sustainable food options.
Groups including Intellectual Decisions on Environmental Awareness Solutions (I.D.E.A.S.) and the Student Culinary Council (SCC) gathered signatures on two petitions Thursday afternoon.
The first petition, created by I.D.E.A.S., urges BU to negotiate with Sodexo to sign up for the Real Food Challenge (RFC), a national organization that works with institutions to look at the source of their food.
The four main pillars of the RFC are that food should be environmentally friendly, ethically sound, community based and produced with humane treatment of workers and products. Event organizers said now was the time to hold the rally and convince BU and Sodexo to sign the RFC as they renegotiate the terms of Sodexo’s contract. The goal proposed was for 20 percent of BU’s food to fit any one of these categories by 2020.
“We’re hoping to get a few thousand signatures to show Sodexo that it’s not a bunch of politically minded and environmentally crazed people asking for this, it’s the student body at large,” said Louis Semanchik, chief of Environmental and Social Responsibility for the SCC and a senior majoring in biology. “We want to get this done together.”
The second petition is a state-wide call for legislation requiring mandatory labeling of all GMOs, or genetically modified organisms, used in food across New York state by group GMO Free NY.
“We want to create a deeper respect for food in general and the people that provide it,” Semanchik said. “This event is one of many to create an awareness of the problems inherent in the food industry from where it’s picked to who