As an undergraduate I worked on farm to college work. That is, I attempted to get more organic, local, and fair food into my college dining services. My three years of activism culminated in writing a thesis. It was in part a grand reflection on my successes and failures in altering the food services of my Alma Mater. It included a national survey of farm to college programs and I integrated that information into a critique of how I went about my personal organizing. As I finished, I concluded that I hadn't been successful in my attempts to change the food services at my school and thus that my thesis would be a waste of time for others to read. Out of respect to the organization that had housed the survey, the Community Food Security Coalition, I gave it to them and they linked it to their website, but I didn't share it with any of my fellow student organizers and I began to explore other facets of the food system when I graduated.
Fast forward 3 years. It's now 2008. My boyfriend is working on a dissertation on student involvement in campus student farms, and he is forwarded my thesis by a colleague who found it online. He questions why I never really shared this potential resource with any of the many people that I know who are working on this issue. All of my feelings of failure bubbled up, and I realized that I have hidden my thesis because I didn't want others to think that I failed. The irony here is especially thick. Here I am, touting to be someone who wants to forward the collective food/farms/student/justice movement and I've hidden perhaps the greatest resource that I have to offer.
So. Here it is. For all of you students, staff, administrators, activists, and fellow rabble-rousers to use and forward at will. If you click on the title, you'll be taken to my undergraduate magnum opus of food.
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