A recent Late Night Food and Chat gave students the opportunity to have a meal and express frustrations with Hamline’s dining service provider, Aramark.
Feed Your Brain (FYB) is a Hamline student organization that advocates for food justice and equity at Hamline University. Past generations of FYB were involved in forming the first iteration of the Food Resource Center at Hamline. This academic year, under the new leadership of sophomores A.J. Escalante, Matthew Maroney and first-year Kaitlynn Fuller, FYB has focused its efforts on protesting and spreading awareness about Aramark, the dining services company that Hamline contracts with for all food service. After months of advocacy, FYB held a Late Night Food and Chat event to engage with students and plan next steps for action.
FYB leaders estimated that nearly 50 people had come through the event, some to simply get a meal, but for many it was a chance to platform grievances with Aramark.
“We were definitely surprised at not only the turnout, but just the level of engagement,” Maroney said. “It was definitely eye opening.”
Dean of Students Patti Klein-Kersten and Athletic Director Alex Focke are heading the Request for Proposals (RFP) process, a process that invites dining service companies to pitch contracts for consideration at Hamline when Aramark’s contract at Hamline ends on July 1.
In September, HUSC unanimously passed a resolution calling for Hamline to not renew a contract with Aramark when the contract ends. The resolution also encouraged that student voices should be involved in the RFP process.
In line with the resolution, students Ollie Engstrom and Hafsa Ahmed were selected to sit on the RFP committee. Despite Engstrom and Ahmed’s involvement, FYB leaders believe more student input is necessary to the RFP process.
One of the central topics of FYB’s Late Night Food and Chat was to propose the idea of a series of town hall events for students to ask questions and give perspectives to the RFP committee. Not only was the interest there, but Maroney noticed passion for the issue beyond what he was expecting.
“Some of the ideas people had were stuff that was a little bit too radical even for me,” Maroney said.
Besides the RFP town halls, another goal of FYB’s for the spring semester is taking over the Food Advisory Committee meetings that Director of Residential Life Yolanda Hansen, and Director of Dining Services Nick Ortega started in the fall semester.
“As long as [Nick Ortega] consents to our taking over, we’re gonna start hosting those monthly,” Maroney said. “Doing all the work internally, and hosting the Food Advisory Committee meetings ourselves.”
Another key element of the event that FYB held from 8:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m. on Monday night was to provide food to students at a time it may not be otherwise accessible to them.
“We wanted to do it on a Monday night because the Piper girl is only open Tuesday through Thursday, so we wanted to have a late night food option for people,” Fuller said. “I was even happy that some people felt comfortable enough on Monday to come and just grab food and leave … You should just be able to get food, somewhere else for free.”
Fellow FYB leaders Escalante and Maroney echoed that sentiment, encouraging that the idea of the meetings is to provide food equity to students at Hamline.
“We ran out of food and none of us are really expecting that, and it’s a good problem to be having,” Escalante said. “I think it’s the opposite of a problem,” Maroney added.