Cyndi's Two Cents

Ag students stop anti-meat campaign

Commentary.

College life is about so much more than what happens in the classroom. For many, a college dormitory is the first place they live “on their own” with no parents down the hall.  In most cases, college students experience new freedoms and experiences that were not available to them just months before when they were in high school.

Managing their own time, money, laundry, health, eating habits, physical activity, etc. is an enormous challenge as well as an opportunity for many young people who had parental guidance to ensure balance before heading off to college.  It is the first time many interact with and are exposed to such a diversity of people in terms of race, religion, and cultures.

In high school, there is a distinct line between social life and home life.  When you move away and live on a college campus, those lines can become a bit blurred.  Balancing all of this freedom and independence can be overwhelming.  Some students will be easily influenced and tempted.  Others will hold their own.  Holding their own is exactly what a group of young people on the campus at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) did last week.

A group of agricultural students thwarted an attempt to convince the university’s student association to promote Meatless Mondays on campus.  UNL’s Collegiate Farm Bureau group jumped into action when they heard about the resolution, helping organize a coalition of more than 100 students to attend a student senate meeting.

Bryce Doeschot with UNL’s Collegiate Farm Bureau said many of the ag students wanted to protect their heritage and felt it was their obligation to show up at the student senate meeting to state their case.

The Meatless Monday resolution was proposed by the Environmental Sustainability Committee of the Association for Students at UNL. Doeschot says committee members didn’t seem to have a strong environmental or animal rights agenda.  He says they were basically misinformed.

In an interview with Brownfield’s Ken Anderson, Doeschot said “Their push behind it was the carbon footprint that beef and other livestock are contributing to the world. They just looked at that and said, ‘oh, if we take away meat from all the cafeterias—or at least promote that with student dollars–we can contribute to less of that.”

One of those speaking against the resolution was sophomore animal science major Ashtyn Shrewsbury. “The student government’s proposal for a Meatless Monday had me baffled,” Shrewsbury said. “We are a land grant university, whose mission, as set forth in the Morrill Act of 1862, is to focus on the teaching of agriculture. Not only is agriculture the backbone of this university, it is the backbone of this state.”

In presenting their case, Doeschot says the ag students used a combination of facts and personal stories about livestock production. In the end, he says, the student senate voted down the proposed resolution with a clear majority vote.

Kudos to these young people for executing an informative and respectful response and in doing so, defeating the attempt to encourage UNL students to join in the global initiative to stop eating meat on Mondays.