If students wasted less food, we might have better options
Several mistakes were made regarding nonhuman animals

If students wasted less food, we might have better options

This essay is in part a response to Daniel Shiffher's editorial regarding the food audit conducted in Dascomb last week; more importantly, it is a general response to address misconceptions regarding Oberlin's dining policy. For as long as I have been at Oberlin, students have complained about the mandatory board plan but their critiques are often misinformed. The resulting misconceptions prevent change by drawing attention away from the true issues at hand. Before any real efforts can be made to change Oberlin's dinning system, we must understand how it works.

First, it is necessary to understand the basics of the CDS meal plan. The average student only eats 15 meals per week. Though we are allowed to eat up to 21 meals, we only pay for 15 meals at about $7.60 per meal or $114 a week. One could argue that these prices are unreasonably inflated, but if everyone ate three meals a day the cost to students would be even greater.

CDS is run via a management contract with Marriott. This means that Marriott is paid a set fee to manage (hire, train, order food, schedule, etc.) the five dining facilities. They hand the bills for food over to the College. As well, the College pays the employees and pays for the facilities' upkeep and expenses. Contrary to Mr. Shiffher's claim, Marriott does not lose money when food is wasted (or stolen). The losses are the College's and are translated into higher dining costs for students.

Many students are frustrated that they are forced to eat on board. However, there are structural impediments which prohibit students from being let off board; these must be addressed if the system is to significantly change. First, our tuition is subsidized by board fees: the college adds about $600 of non-board costs to each student's board bill. This "creative book keeping" allows Oberlin to feature a more competitive tuition while artificially inflating board costs. The College gets less money from co-opers than from CDS eaters. This is the main reason that the number of students in OSCA is limited.

The second major hurdle in changing board options is the fact that the college operates five dining halls and eight co-ops. If the College's dining plan is to be changed to allow students off board, the number of facilities maintained would have to be reduced. The administration does not feel (based on their interpretation of last years dining survey) that students would be willing to reduce the number of dining facilities to allow for reduced or off board options.

The new board plan, which will be in effect next fall, offers more flexibility than the current plan, nonetheless it leaves much to be desired. The new board options will be slightly cheaper, with a savings of $200. The new plan allows students to chose between a standard 21-meal plan, a 14 meal plan with 400 flex dollars and, for off campus students, a 7-meal plan with 800 flex dollars. In essence, for each meal we forgo in the reduced meal plans we get about $2.00 in flex dollars. These three plans cost the same but offer more flexibility and value to the students who do not currently use all of their meals. However, this plan will still be unfair to students in that we will pay for more than we will get. This is a direct result of the aforementioned tuition costs added to the board bill and overhead from the many dining facilities.

We must also be wary of the effects that this new plan will have on downtown businesses. By offering a convenience store, bakery, coffee shop, and deli, the college will undoubtedly detract some business from downtown retailers. This is not to say that Oberlin should continue its financial exploitation of students so it does not hurt downtown businesses; but rather it presents a strong argument for the need to re-examine the infrastructure of our dining plan so we can better meet students' needs while not hurting local businesses.

As long as our board charges subsidize tuition and students desire to maintain all of our dining facilities, significant changes can not be implemented. We are thus forced to support CDS and the food sources chosen by Marriott. Food is political. Our culinary choices are tied to personal health, the environment, and the people around the world who are connected to the food production process.

Pesticide contamination, soil erosion, water table depletion, fossil fuel use and associated pollution, and the health of farmers here and abroad (where dangerous chemicals are used to produce our food) are all inherent to industrial agribusiness. This brings us to the matter of the food waste audit. Although food is biodegradable, as Mr. Shiffher astutely pointed out, the implicit energy consumption and environmental degradation resulting from the production, packaging, and transportation of the wasted food is not so benign. (As well, not much actually biodegrades in the landfills because they are oxygen deficient and lack the necessary conditions for decomposition.)

It is important to note that Marriott is willing to buy local and organic foods if the college requires it to do so. This could be written directly into Marriott's contract as it is at other schools. The college would, of course, incur the increased food costs. Perhaps if students made an effort to waste less food, the college would make a commitment to translate its savings to healthier and more socially responsible food sources. In its investments or food purchases Oberlin should support the social responsibility it teaches.

Students like Mr. Shiffher might take the time to justify the boorish stance of wasting food to spite the system which forces him to eat on board. It is easy to waste food, but it takes some conviction and effort to try to change the system. It would be more productive if disgruntled students attended meetings about the board plan where they could become informed before giving rash input. There have been two well-publicized opportunities on campus this year to voice concerns about the dining plan. The first had a turnout of about a dozen students and the second had just one non-senator student (me). It would behoove concerned students to get involved in these process instead of simply complaining about the results.

If we want to change the meal plan we will have to make our educated opinions known and give input when the administration offers us opportunities. In addition to making it known that we want off-board options we must pressure the administration to redirect the $600 tacked on to our board bill and let it be known if we are willing to close a dining hall(s) and/or a co-op(s). These issues are tied to many difficult questions, but it is inoperative that we begin confronting them. Only when we address these issues will we be able to develop a board plan that meets the needs of students and the community.

-Joseph Waltzer is a College senior

Several mistakes were made regarding nonhuman animals

I am writing in response to letters by Francisco Franco and Ellen Vinz, appearing in the Review in the last two weeks, in which several misguided arguments are made regarding nonhuman animals and their moral status.

One of the few points upon which I agree with Franco in his letter is that the recent forum on animal use in science was good in its effort to be a meaningful dialogue about a controversial issue. Another belief we share is that despite the fact that the forum is over, and despite the fact that I as well will soon be leaving Oberlin (as most of us eventually will), the issue of animal use in science, at Oberlin and everywhere, should be something we continue to think about and something that continues to matter to us.

Yet, we must additionally understand that dialogue by itself is not so meaningful in the context of a progressive social movement. It is easy for those who support vivisection, those whose positions are represented in the status quo, to find satisfaction and appropriateness in maintaining all conflicts to the realm of discussion. However, for those who seek major revolutionary change from the status quo, dialogue is just one step. Animal rights advocates cannot be expected to find satiation in mere discussion, for then absolutely nothing changes. Dialogue must be followed by and combined with action.

Franco is right to characterize ethics as a human construct, yet it certainly does not therefore follow that moral value and rights must be limited in application to human beings. Rights are not choices, but rather are obligations, to be extended not at one's own whim, but to whomever deserves them, which I would insist transcends the boundary of the human species. To say that rights are choices is essentially to say that rights are not rights. Please consider: if rights are merely a choice, then it would seem the basic human rights we tend to advocate and cherish may be disregarded at whim. Is moral justice not something that should be promoted and protected in our society and around the world?

It is my understanding that rights stem from the compassionate as well as rational notion that we should value and respect other beings, where in fundamental ways they are not significantly different than ourselves, as we value and respect our own selves (and as we would probably like to be treated ourselves). We should be consistent in respecting the fundamental interests or concerns of all beings. It is quite clear from observation that beings other than our own individual selves, both human and nonhuman beings, are strongly concerned about their own self-preservation, much like we ourselves are. As human beings who can understand this relation, we have moral duties toward consistency in respecting the fundamental interests and concerns of all sentient beings: their lives, physical well-being, and freedom. Our right to choose ends where our actions significantly harm others is infringment upon their fundamental interests.

Although there are aspects in which normal human lives are more complex and perhaps hold more depth, self-preservation is still a strong felt concern of sentient nonhuman animals (as well as of those humans who might not hold as complex of mental lives as is normal for human beings), and in this, there remains an essential sameness between human and nonhuman animals, such that they are all deserving of an absolute moral respect and reverence. Animals absolutely deserve rights.

Franco writes that animal rights advocates attack animal research because they do not understand it, pointing out that most often criticism and resistance are not coming from within the scientific community. I would first like to point out that there are indeed learned and respected scientists who oppose and are critical of animal experimentation. One of the Oberlin forum's participants, Dr. Andrew Rowan, a biologist, former professor, and now senior vice president of the Humane Society, represented such a position, in which the scientist has the compassion, the moral insight, and the courage to criticize his or her own field of work.

It is unfortunate and quite telling that many scientists have been unable to see outside of the limited and incomplete scientific perspective. Too many scientists believe their work to be wholly objective and divorced from other disciplines, such as philosophy and, in particular, ethics and values. Franco reflects this trend when he writes that all academic fields are like "religions," "just as worthy as the other and none should be held above or below or censor the other. When animal research is attacked it is the conflict of two religions crossing paths, just as notable as any holy war between religions."

What the eyes of science so often fail to recognize is that philosophy and values precede and guide the work of the scientist, as they pervade any act of human agency. Animal research is not objective and untinged by the subjective morals and attitudes of the scientists. Neuroscience and biology are not isolated from ethics, scientists only tend to pretend that they are. The scientist allows him or herself to do what he or she does, motivated by his or her values. In particular, to use, cut into, manipulate, and take the lives of nonhuman animals for scientific study is a moral choice that scientists make. It is therefore absolutely appropriate and important to critically examine the scientific establishment, to question the values of scientists, as we should be able, ready, and willing to criticize the values of anyone, most especially those in positions of power.

Scientists are not free to do as they please, to do whatever needs to be done to obtain knowledge of the world or to make scientific advancements for the benefit of human beings. Whether we know it or not, we, scientists included, already recognize certain ethical limits for scientific endeavors. Namely, we do not allow human beings to be used for scientific study as nonhuman beings are used, that is, in an involuntary manner that infringes upon their lives, freedom, and physical well-being.

We insist that we must help ill and suffering people "in every way possible medically," yet we carelessly fail to recognize that this is not exactly what we mean. We mean to say that we should help the ill in every morally responsible way possible medically. We cannot act as if healthcare and medical advancement are absolute imperatives, to be pursued without constraint, for clearly they already are not. That we refrain from involuntary experimentation upon human beings (that is, any human being, including very young infants and severely mentally retarded humans who do not possess the mental capacities of normal humans), yet allow and advocate nonhuman animal experimentation is a discrepancy that we must be able to morally justify. I am saying that we cannot. Where we already restrain scientific research in recognition of certain human rights.

Aaron Simmons is College senior