Hanging out with students yesterday at Mt. Holyoke College, I got to thinking about how college campuses have played important roles in social change, particularly in corporate campaigns. When it comes to how college students have been able to shift corporate behavior, part of the reason comes from this simple fact: Most of the time, we consumers are a disparate bunch. We are millions large, but we don’t always see our connectedness. We’re hard to organize.
On the other hand, the industries selling to us – whether it’s yo-yos or yurts – tend to be pretty concentrated and resourced. With college campuses, the consumer-seller relationship gets flipped. As tuition paying members of the community, students can make a strong case for why they should have a say in how universities spend their money -- how they shop, in other words.
[News flash: As I write this, I just got the news that friends at Grow Montana, one of these awesome new initiatives, have just been honored by the Glynwood Center for their work in their home state].
The motivation for this work is manifold. In part, students are fired up about health and the food we eat: As one of Yale’s Sustainable Food Project put it: “Students shouldn’t be reading The Jungle in English 101 and then eating it for lunch.” Another motivating force is the desire to strengthen local economies and to keep small-scale farmers farming. And another inspiration is that students, like the ones I met at Mt. Holyoke tonight, who want to get in touch with how their food is grown and share fresh food with friends and family and colleagues.
