identities and bridges them. Her study is charting a Latin- ization of the US that’s “a reciprocal and transformative trend for both the Latino and US cultures.” Cuisines— from “authentically ethnic” to muddled to “fusion”— help “create alternative affiliations and ‘imagined com- munities’ that can reconfigure notions of citizenship,” she says. She also notes that Americans’ disposable in- comes allow them to sample foreign foods as entertain- ment. “We like to ‘eat the other’—which can suggest a
devouring of a colonized culture, especially if we don’t try to understand that culture a little bit through its food.” “You are what you eat” certainly cuts more than one
way. For biologist Raveret-Richter, “We become part of our environment by eating of it.” As a youngster, she ate fish from Lake Michigan, before its pollution was widely recognized. As an adult she came to realize that “when- ever you eat a fish, you join the marine ecosystem—and it joins you.”
g by Mary Nelen ’79
LAST SPRING Skidmore students took on the Real Food Chal- lenge, a national effort to make food served on campuses as humane, fair-trade, ecologically safe, and local as possible. The goal is to make those descriptions true for 20% of campus food by 2020.
Recently well over 10% of dining-hall food has come from the student-run organic garden next to the Colton Alumni Welcome Center. How is this possible? Skidmore has four things going for it: a decent growing zone, a willing dining-services director, an aggressive grass-roots Food Action Group, and Gabby Stern ’13 and her compatriots.
Stern spent a summer not just toiling in the student garden, but also interning at American Farmland Trust and working with the farmers’ market in downtown Saratoga—a locavore’s trifec- ta. “I came into Skidmore with zero experience,” says the envi- ronmental studies major. “Then I started working the garden. There I was, 18 years old, and it was the first time I’d harvested a carrot. There is a problem with that. How had I gone my entire life not knowing this?”
Under the umbrella of the Environmental Action Club, the Food Action Group began four years ago when students broke ground. Stern took over as manager of the garden in 2010 and contracted with the dining hall. She says, “A few professors gave their two cents, and we just learned on our own. We get a lot of support from the ES department; they covet this garden! It has been a great part of my education.”
Stern got no academic credit for that work, but Faith Nichola
’14 did an internship in data analysis for last spring’s Real Food Challenge, providing findings to give Skidmore’s administration a better understanding of the issue.
Elizabeth Cohen ’14 grew up with a garden in her backyard, so the origins of a carrot were familiar to her. But coming to Skid- more put organic food in a different light. “Working in the garden made me think about where things are coming from. Affordability and access aren’t the same for everybody,” she says. Riley Neu - ge bauer, Skidmore’s sustainability coordinator, also sees food as a social justice issue, arguing that “sustainability includes equity as well as ecology and economy. If people don't have access to one of their most basic needs—food—or if the only food they have access to is grown with pesticides that accumulate in our bodies over time, harms the environment that we are all a part of, and doesn’t tell a story about where it came from or who grew it or why that matters, then we have a justice issue.” Margot Reisner ’14 followed her term as manager of the stu- dent garden with a semester in Australia to study permaculture. Reisner, in the social and cultural track of the ES major, defines permaculture as “the mentality that everything we do as humans has to do with ecology. If there is a discrepancy between the way human systems work and the way ecology works, then you are going to have a problem, such as the health problems we see today due to what we are feeding our animals and putting into the air. Permaculture mimics the way ecological systems work.” After graduation, she plans to start her own farm. “I just want a place to have people live and be healthy,” she says.
SPRING 2013 SCOPE 21
ERIC JENKS '08
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