Saturday, January 26

Our first official meeting will take place this Sunday, January 27th, at 8pm in Mathematics 520.

We have a few items on the agenda. First of all, though CUFSP gained SGB regonition in the past, we need to re-establish a club board, which means CUFSP needs to have people in the positions of President, Vice President, Treasurer and Secretary. We will also decide what projects to begin work on, bearing in mind that it is best to begin with clear, narrow ambitions that we will have a greater chance of accomplishing than broader, long-term projects. I am hoping to establish a few individuals to claim leadership of projects so we can form a few working groups dedicated to each cause. We also need to establish our official group charter, which we can develop through a process of revisions.

Tentative ideas include
--Starting a campus garden, possibly working with EarthCo and/or EcoReps. We discussed a few possible locations, such as near the Environmental Stewardship Office, at Cathedral Gardens (Barnard Dorm), one of the green spaces in the main Columbia quad, or on a rooftop.
--Developing a composting system
--Introducing r-BGH-free milk into the dining halls. (This was suggested by a Columbia grad who is now working on agricultural policy in D.C.)
--Advocating for “local water” (i.e. not bottled). (This was suggested by Annie Weinberg of Food and Water Watch)

Alison Powell (currently abroad) and I have received many emails from people outside of the Columbia/Barnard community who are interested in CUFSP’s future actions to support sustainable food on campus. I am also in touch with students at other schools working on similar issues as part of the Real Food Challenge (www.realfoodchallenge.org) mentioned in the previous post. All CUFSP group members are welcome to be involved in interschool activity, which requires communication and meetings with university students from around NY state.

Please invite anyone who you think might be interested in food sustainability to come. The more dedicated members we have, the wider the range of issues we can tackle!
If you would like to come but are unable, please email me (Becky -- rmd2154@columbia.edu) and I will keep you updated on our activity. I hope to see you Sunday!