A Humanitarian Approach to Dining

Last semester, Graduate School of Education student AnnaLise S. Hoopes ruffled feathers with her “Cage-Free Eggs” campaign, fighting for the abolition of eggs from battery-cage facilities from our dining halls. But Hoopes doesn’t have all her cruelty-free eggs in one basket—as Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) comes to their decision, Hoopes is focusing her attention on another cause: starting a vegetarian club on campus.

The Harvard Vegetarian Society is still an unofficial group, but is applying for official recognition from the university. “We’re trying to build a Harvard-wide community in which vegetarians can come together, share food and talk about animal welfare issues,” says Hoopes.

The Society’s motive is “not to recruit people to become vegetarian,” says member Amary K. Wiggin ’09. It is to “get Harvard to adapt a more humanitarian approach to food,” she says.

For now, the group’s main activities include a potluck dinner every Monday at Karma Yoga at 7:30 p.m.

But the off-campus dinner location isn’t a protest—the Harvard Vegetarian Society maintains that HUDS is a strong ally to anyone who lives a meatless life.

Even on days when vegan-friendly entrees don’t abound (for lunch on Friday Mar. 9, the only vegan dining options were miso soup and whole kennel corn), the salad bar is a perennial fallback. “You can’t really go wrong there,” says Wiggin.

HUDS pulls out all the stops to keep the lentils and tofu inspired: Director for Marketing and Communications Crista Martin meets with a vegetarian committee regularly, and has worked with Mollie Katzan, a vegetarian cookbook author whom Martin claims is a “great resource to open up options.”

From HUDS’ tofu walnut broccoli stir-fry to Felipe’s grilled vegetable burrito, vegetarians at Harvard have plenty to munch on—and now they have a community should the recipes ever run dry.