Case Study: Hampshire College

COLLEGE DINING SERVICES AND SUSTAINABILITY? Beet the System!

As individuals, as neighborhoods, as communities, counties, states, and as nations we begin to take baby steps. Small changes scattered here and there. That one person who will take the reins of a particular area and lead. This is the new beginning. As leaders or as followers, we are open to change. We are open to new beginnings (R. Warren Flint and W.L. Houser).

I became involved with the efforts to localize Hampshire's cafeteria in the fall of 2004. Throughout the years of Hampshire's existence, students have pressured the cafeteria to buy more local food and have raised awareness on campus about Sodexho and its corporate politics. I became involved in the project this academic year, coming from a place of examining what it means to make communities more sustainable. The cafeteria localization project provided me with an opportunity to apply what I had already learned and was continuing to learn about sustainability and apply it to the communities of which I am a part.

The aspect that most interested me in making our cafeteria more sustainable was investigating the corporate influences in our cafeteria- on the management of our dining service, Sodexho, and also on the food system. Having been inspired by the film, 'The Corporation' (directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott, 2004) over the summer, I was determined to make some type of impact on Sodexho, the dining service corporation that is well established on our campus. My initial thoughts were that Hampshire should get rid of Sodexho and create an in-house food service (where the dining service employees become employees of Hampshire instead of Sodexho), which would be a statement of localization against corporate control. This idea of anti-corporate localization coincided with the idea of localizing the food that we serve in the cafeteria as a way to pull out of corporate-dominated agribusiness. I was interested in these issues separately, but also the ways in which they overlapped in terms of how Hampshire's reliance on Sodexho prevents and supports our ability to buy local food.

Hampshire Timeline

The following is a timeline that sums up the efforts at Hampshire over the past two and half years to localize the cafeteria.

To provide a more in depth overview of our process, I thought it would be helpful to use the Oxfam 'Buy Local: Food and Farm Toolkit' that outlines the steps to take to get local food into a college cafeteria.

'BUY LOCAL: FOOD AND FARM TOOLKIT'

STEP 1: RESEARCH YOUR SHOOL'S FOOD SYSTEM

One of first steps in the most recent localization efforts was that students involved in researching local food got a general overview of where our cafeteria food comes from. The distributors that the dining service purchases from include Sysco, Fowlers for produce (a Connecticut based distributor that buys from some local sources), Vista, United Natural, Pepsi, Nissan, Diana's bakery, Mansfield paper, Garelick for milk (now Cook's Farm!) as well as Hampshire's Farm (produce in the fall) (also Czajikowski's farm now!).

Since we (the students currently involved in the local foods efforts) decided that we wanted to work on the produce situation, we knew that one of the first steps would be to gather information on how much and what kinds of produce are consumed in the cafeteria. We worked with our dining service manager to get a breakdown (in the form of a spreadsheet) of all of the produce that the cafeteria has used in the past year in order to get an understanding of what the demand is for each item. We also looked at the general prices of each item to estimate how much money we spent on each good, to be able to compare those prices with the prices of local farmers and distributors.

STEP 2: FORM YOUR TEAM

The most recent effort to get more local food in the cafeteria took off in the fall of 2003 in a class called 'Elements of Sustainability'. A group of students researched local food and the food system at Hampshire, and from there, they organized a student group called 'The Local Foods Initiative.' With this group, they compiled a survey about Hampshire community members' opinions and concerns on local food purchasing. This survey served as a good jumpstart to show the dining service manager and the administration of the school that the Hampshire community was interested in making efforts to buy more local food. (To see the results of this survey, click here).

With the support of the community, students began to research what was available in the area for buying local food, including

Over the fall semester, we continued research where students last semester left off. One of the big efforts we made on campus to get the community more involved in the issue was organizing an all-community vote on whether or not people were interested in localizing the cafeteria. This vote potentially held more weight than the survey that was conducted a year before because it was an 'official' community council vote which means that it is taken seriously on campus and has the ability to influence people who are in positions of making decisions. To read more about the vote, look at the section on 'Raise Awareness on Your Campus' below.

Something else the student group did last semester was to incorporate the local food efforts into their academic work. For instance, students wrote papers on the local milk industry and the distance strawberries travel from California to Massachusetts, and another student did her senior thesis project on the nutritional perspective of eating local food all year round in the Pioneer Valley (where Hampshire College is located).

This semester (Spring 2005), the student group is creating connections with students at the other four colleges in our area (we are connected through a five-college consortium) who are also working to get local food in their cafeterias. The hope is that we can eventually create a five-college local food purchasing system to create a large enough economy of scale to really make a difference for local farmers in our area.

We also conducted another survey at each of the five colleges to bring to a food service convention, to prove to big dining service and food corporations that college students are interested in eating local food. (Click here to see the results of this survey for Hampshire and for the five colleges as a whole,). We are also working on creating educational pamphlets (to raise awareness in our community about local food and the ongoing efforts), and a big local foods meal (to gather people together and celebrate local food efforts).

Alongside this student group, another local foods group was formed in fall 2004. This group comprised of the president and treasurer of our school, the dining service manager in our cafeteria, a couple of faculty who are interested in and connected to the project, the two Hampshire farm managers, an employee of CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture), an employee of Massachusetts Department of Agriculture, and a few very involved students. After a couple years of expressing interest in the idea of buying more local food at Hampshire but not really acting on it, finally, everyone who was interested in or in a position of power to influence local food purchasing came together to discuss the practicalities of how to pursue making change. This group met about once a month regularly this past fall semester.

We talked about the steps needed to buy local food in the cafeteria under the management of Sodexho, and we talked about some bigger ideas, such as the possibility of creating a five-college local food initiative. We also discussed the idea of creating a fair trade local food network amongst colleges on the east coast (where colleges that are in season could connect to colleges in the off season to its local growers, and vice versa- to read more about this idea, click here). The relevant members of the group also started a dialogue between the presidents of the five colleges and the five-college dining service directors around the idea of buying local food. This group proved to be a good outlet for networking amongst the various people involved in making decisions around buying local food on campus, as well as a place to discuss ways in which Hampshire College as an institution can impact the growing local foods movement.

STEP 3: INVESTIGATE LOCAL FOOD SOURCES

Massachusetts State

The area where Hampshire College is located is incredibly fertile. Whether you look at Hampshire County and the surrounding counties, the Pioneer Valley, Massachusetts as a state, or the entire bioregion that includes parts of Vermont, the college is surrounded by an abundance of agriculture.

According to the Massachusetts Department of Agriculture, there are about 262 dairy farms in the state of Massachusetts that produce about 38 million gallons of milk annually, 500 acres of farmland dedicated to tomato production that produced over 56 million pounds of tomatoes in 1999, 3,000 acres of potato farmland that produced more than 68 million pounds of potatoes in 1998, and an active maple syrup industry that produced 44,000 gallons of maple syrup in 1999 ("Mass. Department"). Although I imagine that many of the farms included in these statistics are larger than is most beneficial for the earth, I think it's amazing to see how much the land in the state has the capacity of producing. To see a chart of what's available when in Massachusetts, click here.

Within the more immediate location surrounding Hampshire College, there are over 16 farmer's markets (Franklin, Hampden and Hampshire counties), and according to CISA's 2004 farm products guide, there are over 129 farms in the Pioneer Valley that provide products to the local communities ("Community Involved").

Although Massachusetts' primary growing season is in the summer and early fall, some produce products are available in the winter or all year round, including apples, mung beans, shiitake mushrooms, baking potatoes, sprouts, and butternut squash. Not to mention there are opportunities to purchase meats, dairy, and eggs all year round.

Farmers and Insurance

Although Hampshire College is located in an incredibly fertile area, surrounded by farms, it has been difficult to find farms to work with on campus because Sodexho (among other large institutions) has a fairly strict policy on only buying food from farmers who have a particular type of insurance. Sodexho expects all of its purveyors to have liability insurance. According to Doug Martin, Hampshire's dining service manager, "the amount [of liability insurance] required depends on the products we purchase from them [the farmers/distributors]. The higher the potentially dangerous the product is the more insurance we require. ex: we do not require as much insurance for a paper distributor as we would a seafood company). Unfortunately, many farmers can't afford this insurance or can't bother with the process of getting insured, even though their conditions may meet the requirements, are close to meeting them, or are even better but not in par with Sodexho's interpretations. This standard is somewhat limiting to Hampshire's ability to buy local food on campus and is one of the many reasons why we have been interested in replacing Sodexho with an in-house food service (so that we can be more flexible around insurance).

Hampshire Farm Produce

One of the successes for local food that started off this academic year was the 20 shares of produce purchased by the dining service from Hampshire College's farm this fall (2004). There has been an established relationship between Hampshire's farm and the cafeteria for a long time, initiated by the farm managers and the dining service manager. For a while our dining service would take any left over produce from the farm and eventually began to purchase some of the CSA shares. The 20 shares that the dining service purchased this fall was the most it has purchased yet. The farm-fresh vegetables were well-received by both the cafeteria staff as well as the community members who ate them (136 students out of 192 surveyed said that they enjoyed eating the farm veggies- the rest didn't know or didn't care). It's amazing that we are able to provide the cafeteria with so much food that was grown right on campus. At the same time, we (the local foods group) think that we could be purchasing even more locally grown produce, and we also think that it's important to support farms other than Hampshire's farm, because other farms in the area need our support more than Hampshire does.

Local Milk!

Another big success we've had on our campus this year is buying local milk. One student (Will Wallace-Gusakov) worked on this case for about two and a half years before the purchasing actually happened. After initially pursuing another milk distributor (Our Family Farms) that was unable to provide Hampshire with milk because they did not have the correct distribution packaging (five-gallon bags in a box), he found a farm that was willing and able to work for us. This farm is so local, the cows' feed is actually grown on Hampshire's land. Although this farm, Cook's Farm, does not have the exact insurance that Sodexho generally requires for its distributors, our dining service has managed to get around the issue by working with the college so that the college itself pays the bills for the milk and Sodexho reimburses the college. After a lot of networking and communication, and a lot of effort on Will's (the student initiator) part, we are finally serving local milk in our cafeteria. A local farm, Cook's Farm, supplies Hampshire's cafeteria with five-gallon bags of 2%, skim, and chocolate milk, and gallon jugs of whole milk. There is a slight increase in price for the local milk, but our dining service manager is compensating for this increase by watching spending on other products. So far, the cost is not a problem. The flexibility around insurance in the local milk case serves as an example that within the corporate dining service world, there is room for flexibility if the employees at your dining service are willing to work with you.

Czajikowski's Farm

As for more local produce and our difficulty in finding farmers who have the insurance Sodexho requires, fortunately, in our process of searching we got in touch with a woman (Kelly Erwin) who works for the Massachusetts Department of Agriculture. She has been working with farmers in our area to try and get more local food into the public schools. She and her co-worker (Anne Carter) have been working with a particular farmer, Czajikowski (from Hadley, Mass) that has the insurance Sodexho is looking for (the same insurance the management in the public schools requires, as well as large grocery stores that this farmer supplies). Since we connected with Kelly, we have been working with her and Czajikowski to see if we can build a relationship with him. Although he is just one farmer, he also works with other local farmers in a sort of unofficial co-operative, where he gets items from them if he doesn't have a particular item or if he doesn't have enough of something. This cooperation is a plus because we are interested in supporting more than one farmer if possible.

We served some produce from Czajikowski for our all-community Thanksgiving meal on campus, and we are in the process of placing an order for some root vegetables.

STEP 4: GET ORGANIZED AND SET GOALS

Initially, the general issues that the student local foods group on campus said it was committed to included:

Although many of these issues remain the priorities of the group, a couple of them have evolved. For example, after a long process of investigating the possibility of an in-house food service on campus, it was decided that for now, the best option for Hampshire as a community, as well as a positive step toward corporate responsibility, would be to work with Sodexho to buy local food. (To read more about this decision, click here).

Also, although all of these issues are being addressed to some extent, the priority of the efforts at this point are to replace food that we are already using that could be bought locally with local food. The student group as well as the administrative/faculty/community member group supports this effort.

STEP 5: RAISE AWARENESS ON YOUR CAMPUS

Our local foods student group has made various attempts to educate our community about the importance of local food purchasing, since a big part of what we're interested in is engaging people with the question of why it's important to buy locally grown food. Through surveys, votes, videos, speakers (Brian Halweil spoke last semester- Fall 2004), posters, and an up-coming local foods meal, we have attempted to raise awareness on our campus.

All-Community Vote

Last semester (fall 2004), the student group worked on an all-community vote on campus. The voting process was organized by the community council (our student government) and the vote itself was non-binding, which meant that the results had no immediate effects- instead, it served more as a representation of the community's inclinations which could be used as statistical data to further support students' efforts. The yes/no vote that the local foods group proposed stated:

"We support efforts to localize Hampshire College's food service by replacing Sodexho (one of the largest food service companies in the world) with a locally controlled food service that is administered by current staff and serves more local food.

We support this change both to actively withdraw support from the globalized food system that allows a few corporations to control food supplies at the expense of small farmers, local communities, and biological and cultural diversity worldwide; AND to actively support and participate in a local food system because of the environmental, social, aesthetic, economic, and nutritional benefits that would accrue to both the Hampshire College community and the larger community of which we are a part. Do you support this proposal, yes or no?"

The results of this voting process were quite informative- not necessarily the actual results of the vote but the process itself. A couple of unexpected reactions took place. First of all, when people on campus first started to hear about the vote, a lot of people thought that by getting local food in the cafeteria, we meant getting all local food in the cafeteria. This was not what the vote was proposing. The vote was proposing to get more local food, which basically meant that we were working to replace food that we were already buying from distant distributors with food that we could buy locally. So a lot of people were concerned that if they voted 'yes,' they would lose the salad bar in the winter. Although the student group attempted to dispel these myths by tabling in the cafeteria, people were still confused.

Another issue of concern around the vote was that people did not fully understand that the vote was not binding (meaning the vote had no immediate effects except to show the community's opinions about the issues raised), so they thought that if they voted 'yes,' Sodexho would no longer run the cafeteria. Upon seeing the proposal, which stated "We support efforts to localize Hampshire College's food service by replacing Sodexho (one of the largest food service companies in the world) with a locally controlled food service that is administered by current staff and serves more local food," members of the dining staff were caught of guard and felt that if the vote were supported, their jobs could be at risk and economic stability would be threatened.

Whereas my understanding of the vote (which was the technical meaning of the vote) was that a vote 'yes' would aid in supporting the continued research to see if and how a switch to an in-house food service would work, many members of the community interpreted it as a vote 'yes' would result in the automatic switch from Sodexho to an in-house food service. This interpretation made the dining service employees feel totally disempowered because it seemed like changes were being made over their heads- this reaction was really the exact opposite of my intention (since in my eyes one benefit of an in-house food service is that the employees would feel more empowered to be working directly for Hampshire College, the immediate community that they are part of, as opposed to a huge, distant corporation).

Dining Service Employees Stability

Although in our research, we (the local food group) were looking for a way to keep all of the current Sodexho employees and hire them under Hampshire College, some people thought that we were jeopardizing the employees' livelihood by proposing such a switch. Even if their jobs were not lost, people (the Sodexho employees as well as other community members) expressed a lot of concern over the employees receiving the same wages, benefits, and pension plans in making a switch to an in-house dining service. These are incredibly relevant concerns, and ones that we were already researching. In fact, one of the biggest questions I was investigating at the time was, "If we switched to an in-house food service, would the current dining service employees maintain the same wages, benefits and pension plans?"

At that point, the research that I had already begun about the wage/benefits/pension plan issue had showed me very little, basically because it is confidential information. I had spoken with a woman at Hampshire's Human Resources department who helped me interpret a simplified explanation of the benefits received by an anonymous Sodexho employee at Hampshire's dining commons. We then tried to compare those benefits to the benefits received by Hampshire employees and basically determined that the benefits were very similar (except that the Sodexho employees received a better dental plan). It was difficult to really get a clear picture though because of our inability to go into specifics due to confidentiality issues.

As for wages and pension plans, once again the confidentiality factor was an issue, but I was able to figure out that the wages for the Sodexho employees come from the costs of students on the meal plan, which means that if we switched to an in-house service, the employees would potentially receive the same wages as long as the students paid the same price for the meal plan. One issue that comes up with this situation is the possibility of unequal wages amongst Hampshire employees; for instance, if Sodexho pays their employees a certain amount of money (money that ultimately comes from Hampshire students), and that sum of money is more than other employees of Hampshire of an equitable position, then it would be potentially unfair for Hampshire to pay some of its employees more than others in order to maintain the same wages that Sodexho paid them. In other words, it might create uproar amongst other Hampshire employees if the dining service staff was getting paid more money than them. This means that if a switch were to happen, if the former Sodexho employees had made more under the management of Sodexho, they could potentially end up earning smaller wages.

This issue brings up its own questions in regards to the balance of gains and losses. For instance, if the wages of the dining service employees decreased due to a switch in management, does this loss outweigh the gains of becoming a local, independently-run management service? What's difficult is that the gains of creating an in-house food service are not necessarily as clear as the losses, because a lot of the gains cannot necessarily be seen automatically (for example, contributing less to air pollution over time through less dependence on distant distributors). Also, the losses that occur due to Hampshire's continuing support to Sodexho are not as clear or immediate as the losses that would take place in the Hampshire community (for example, one of the losses of working for Sodexho is that we have less control of where our money flows).

The distraught responses of the dining service staff made it easy for other members of the Hampshire community to relate to their potential suffering, and this took away from their ability to look at the other, not as easily seen, gains and losses. Yet at the same time, it made me consider the idea that maybe the community's stance on the situation is that they are more willing to sacrifice the long term gains (that could come with localizing the management) for the well-being and stability of the people close to them who might 'lose' in the short run.

Since I knew that a few schools had dropped Sodexho during the 'Dump Sodexho' campaign, I decided to research how other schools addressed this transitional issue. One example is that at American University, the dining service was able to maintain all of the same employees upon a switch from Sodexho to Bon Appetit. According to Sarah Capper, a student who was involved in the 'Dump Sodexho' Campaign at American University, "we maintained the same employees and their union, and due to the continuation of the collective bargaining agreement with the union, wages and benefits were unaffected" (from an email exchange). Although this switch worked for the employees at American University, a lot of the stability came from their involvement in a union, which is something the employees at Hampshire don't have.

In the end, amidst all of the confusion, the results of the vote at Hampshire were 239 in favor of the proposal and 165 opposed. Once again, the all-community vote did not imply an immediate switch from Sodexho to an in-house service- voting 'yes' for the proposal would only support the continued efforts of researching what would be possible, and would represent what the community is interested in working towards. At the same time, the concerns that were raised were very important and encouraged me to understand the potential transition more clearly.

To find out more about the confusion that resulted around the all-community vote and our attempts to clarify the issues, read either a letter that I wrote and sent out to all Hampshire community members, or a letter that I sent to all of the cafeteria staff.

Five-College Survey

In addition to this all-community vote, the local foods group at Hampshire also just recently finished another survey, the results of which were used along with the results from the same survey at other colleges to serve as statistical data of students' interest in local food at colleges. This data was brought by a group of students and representatives of the Massachusetts Department of Agriculture to a dining service management and food distributor convention to show corporate food people that there's a demand for local food at colleges. (To see the results of this survey at Hampshire, click here. To see the results of this survey within the five colleges, click here.)

Local Foods Meal

The local foods group is also working on further educating people about local food and what we're doing by creating a big local foods meal on campus for the end of this semester. The event will consist of a locally grown/produced meal (with local meat, eggs, cheese, produce, lettuce from our on-campus greenhouse, etc), music, speakers (possibly local farmers), informational tables for farmers to share the work they do, and education pamphlets to pass out to the guests. The purpose of the meal is to bring people in the (five-college) community together to further educate about and celebrate what has been happening with local food.

Five-College Local Food Purchasing

Another project that is in the works is creating a network within the five-colleges (through the five-college consortium of which Hampshire is a part) to buy local food. The vision is to create a co-operative between the five colleges so that we can get organized to buy directly from farmers in the area or buy from local distributors. This solution would aid in solving a couple of problems:

This effort is being initiated on the student side (through the start-up of student groups on each campus), through the dining service side (through dialogue between the dining service managers and also efforts on their parts as individual schools to start buying local), and through the presidents (through conversation at presidents meetings).

STEP 6: TALK TO FOOD SERVICES

On our campus, we established a relationship with the dining service from the beginning of our process. We found it helpful to have an ongoing dialogue with the dining service manager, who has been very supportive from the beginning of the local food conversations. We also found that it would have been more beneficial for us to also have an ongoing dialogue with other dining service employees, not just the manager, to hear their opinions on the situation.

STEP 7: EVALUATE AND PUBLICIZE YOUR SUCCESSES

Upon making the switch from Garelick Farms Milk (not local) to Cook's Farm Milk (local), our school received a good amount of publicity. The student who spearheaded the local milk purchasing contacted various publications, and the school's communications department also did some outreach. Publicity is very important to our cause, because part of what we're trying to do is show people what's possible! The following are links to a few different articles:

Sustainable Dining Service Management

An important part of the localization process at Hampshire that Oxfam's outline does not directly address is examining the management of a school's dining service both as an issue in and of itself, as well as in terms of a school's ability to purchase local food.

I started out the fall semester (2004) by trying to figure out who exactly Sodexho is. After a lot of research and dialogue, I think I have gained a basic understanding. To read an in-depth explanation about Sodexho, click here.

When I began my research about Sodexho and localizing the cafeteria, I compiled an explanation called 'Why We Don't Need Sodexho,' which I gave to members of the faculty/staff/administrator/student local foods group on campus to show that if we were talking about localizing the cafeteria, addressing the issue of our dining service management is just as important as addressing where our food comes from. The following is that explanation:

Why We Don't Need Sodexho

Who is Sodexho?

How have we benefited from Sodexho's services?

How does Sodexho prevent us from going local?

Financial Roadblocks

Conclusion

In response to this explanation, Hampshire's president wrote me a letter describing his perspective on the situation, emphasizing the point that he thought I should separate the Sodexho issue and the local foods issue. To read a full copy of his letter, click here.

Is Sodexho Socially Responsible?

With this information out in the open, I was able to start a dialogue with the president of our college. He took my opinions and suggestions, and responded to them with his own ideas. One of the main suggestions he made was that because Hampshire has a socially responsible investment policy, it would be interesting to put Sodexho through the test to see whether or not we would consider them a socially responsible company under our policy.

I took his advice, and sat down with the treasurer of the school to go through the policy to get a better understanding of its guidelines, then looked at Sodexho's policies to see whether they pass the socially responsible investing test. From what we could tell, Sodexho passed the test, primarily because of its commitment to the Global Sullivan Principles for Corporate Responsibility. Partly in response to the pressure of student protests through the 'Dump Sodexho' campaign from 2000-2001 (to find out more about this campaign, click here), Sodexho took some steps toward becoming a more responsible corporation, with a commitment to the Global Sullivan Principles and specific working conditions that were created as part of that commitment. The following are a list of Sodexho's working conditions:

Understanding Sodexho's Relationship With Prisons

Understanding Sodexho's relationship with prisons was one of the most complicated and controversial aspects of this project. Within my resources, there seemed to be a bit of discrepancy as to what exactly Sodexho's relationship with prisons is. Although Sodexho claims that it doesn't "own any prisons," other resources I looked at said that Sodexho owns "for-profit prison companies." When I initially came across this information about Sodexho's contentious relationship with prisons, I showed it to the manager of the Hampshire dining commons as well as to some administrators who I am working with on the local food campaign. Upon reading this information, the dining service manager wrote a letter to one of his advisors who immediately responded with clarification over "an issue that has surfaced on the Hampshire campus" (to see a copy of this full letter, click here). This letter certainly highlighted a lot of the more positive work Sodexho does, but at the same time the prison issue was still confusing to me.

I decided I would write a letter directly to this Sodexho USA official (Leslie Aun, who is Sodexho USA's vice-president of corporate communication) comparing information about its relationship with prisons that I had compiled from different resources that had a different interpretation of the situation. (To read a full copy of the letter that I wrote, click here). My intention was to try to clarify some of my biggest points of confusion, and I felt very grateful when I got a response from Aun. (To read a full copy of the letter she wrote, click here).

One example of a question I asked and the reply that Leslie Aun gave me is:

ME: "A second condition [about Sodexho's policies] you mention [in your first letter] is "We will not own any prisons." What exactly does it mean to Sodexho to own a prison? This seems to be quite a controversial word that may be defined differently by different organizations. According to Corporate Watch, "In addition to providing ancillary services (food, grounds keeping, etc) to a number of prisons throughout continental Europe, Sodexho Alliance owns for-profit prison companies in the U.K. and Australia. Sodexho's subsidiaries- Australian Integrated Management Systems and United Kingdom Detention Services- not only privately operate prisons and refugee detention centers, but also work with governments to design, build and finance new prisons" (Corporate Watch).

SODEXHO: Owning a prison is the same as owning a school, a hospital, a college or any similar type of building or property that is largely reserved for some type of public use. We don't own prisons, just like we don't own schools, office buildings, colleges etc. Another example: Sodexho does own businesses that provide food and other ancillary services at Hampshire College, along with hundreds of other colleges, hospitals and corporate account across the country. But we do not own Hampshire College. We own companies that provide services in prisons. We don't own prisons. We don't hold lease and title to the land, property, contents etc. of the facilities we serve. By comparison, Corrections Corporations of America and other similar companies, actually own many of the prisons they operate."

Here, Aun suggests that ownership implies not holding "lease and title to the land, property, contents etc. of the facilities" they serve. She continues to explain the role of the government (who officially owns the prisons Sodexho manage), and the role of Sodexho at the prisons.

ME: "According to this organization [Corporate Watch], Sodexho Alliance owns private prison companies. Does Sodexho say that the Australian Integrated Management Systems (AIMS) and United Kingdom Detention Centers (UKDC) own the prisons, and that because these companies are just subsidiaries of Sodexho Alliance, Sodexho does not actually own the prisons? Doesn't a subsidiary mean that the parent company owns the subsidiary companies, and therefore by a degree of separation, the parent company owns what the subsidiaries own, and ultimately has the final say over the subsidiaries actions? Especially considering Sodexho is the sole owner (or parent company) of these two subsidiaries.

SODEXHO: First of all, it is against the law in Australia, the UK and most other countries for private companies to own prisons. So even if we wanted to, which we don't, we couldn't own prisons. Our subsidiaries AIMS and UKDS provide services in prisons owned by the governments of Australia and the UK, as well as other countries. That means the building, property, land, facilities etc. are the legal possessions of these governments. If these governments don't like how we provide the services we are contracted to provide, they can fire us. We couldn't be fired if we were the owner! ... At the prisons where we provide services, there are government officials on-site who oversee on a daily basis how we perform. Additionally, the way we do our job is very specifically set out in our contracts with these governmental entities. These facilities are owned by their respective governments, and the ultimate authority for how they are managed and operated is the responsibility of their respective governments. Going back to the earlier campus analogy, just because we provide food service in the cafeteria at Hampshire College doesn't mean we 1) own the cafeteria 2) aren't closely overseen by the administration on your campus and held to very specific standards. The contracts for the prisons we manage run hundreds of pages long (happy to send you some sample pages) and are very specific about the standards of care we must provide.

It's certainly seems reassuring that there are government officials on the site of the privately-managed prisons, and that the contracts are clearly defined with the governments. This suggests that there are checks and balances in place and that Sodexho and its subsidiaries are not entirely left to their own devices to run the prisons. Since the government is supposed to represent the 'public,' then technically the 'public' has some influence and control over the prisons Sodexho runs.

Aun responds really clearly to the ownership question in this part of the letter:

ME: "You continue in your letter by saying, Sodexho does "not own prisons anywhere in the world, nor do [they] provide service to any privately-owned prisons." Once again referring back to the same Corporate Watch example, "Sodexho Alliance owns for-profit prison companies in the U.K. and Australia" (Corporate Watch).

SODEXHO: You are confusing two different concepts here. A prison can be owned by a private company or owned by a government. A prison can be managed by a private company or managed by a government. Ownership and management are not the same things. Ownership involves legal ownership of property-management involves having a contract to provide services on property owned by others."

This part gives a really good breakdown of Sodexho's overall relationship with prisons:

ME: "What makes a prison public or private according to Sodexho?"

SODEXHO: "Sodexho doesn't have a definition for what makes a prison private or public. We can only tell you that 1) we don't own prisons 2) we do manage prisons 3) we do not provide our management services in prisons that are owned by non-governmental groups (private companies.) 4) We only provide our services in prisons that are owned by governments that: a) are democratically elected b) do not practice the death penalty."

All in all, this letter certainly clarified some of my questions. Ownership implies the legal ownership of property, and management refers to having a contract to run services. What's interesting to me is that the way Sodexho talks about its relationship with prisons to the general public makes it seem that because it doesn't own prisons, its relationship with prisons is limited.

What's really going on though is that although Sodexho doesn't own the property of the prisons, it manages some or all of the services in the prisons, which in my mind is ownership in a different kind of way. I say this because in many cases, although the 'owners' might have more say overall, the managers tend to have the most influence over how things are run on a day to day basis. And the question that this leads me to still is why Sodexho, a food service management company, has management power in many facets of running prisons?

Work With Sodexho?

In the end, although it was a difficult decision, I, along with other students working on the localization campaign, decided that due to the entirety of the circumstances, it would be most beneficial right now for Hampshire to work with Sodexho to buy local food instead of continuing to push getting rid of Sodexho and replacing them with an in-house food service, while also pushing the company to buy more local food at the same time. (To read more about what led to this decision, click here.)

So far, this decision has proven to be valuable. We were able to buy local milk under the management of Sodexho, and we are on our way to purchasing more local produce. The goal now is to encourage people at other institutions that Sodexho serves to pressure Sodexho to make similar efforts to purchase local food, so that the change becomes more systemic as opposed to just situational here at Hampshire.

Although I still support efforts toward the ideal of an in-house food service because it provides more decision-making power to the people who live in the community the management is providing for, I think that our decision to try and work with Sodexho to buy local food is worth a try. If it doesn't work out, we can always reassess the situation again!

RESOURCES

Organizing:

"Campaign Materials." Oxfam America. 2005. Oxfam International Privacy and Legal Information. March 2005 http://www.oxfamamerica.org/newsandpublications/publications/campaign_materials

Oxfam America is an organization that is "committed to creating lasting solutions to global poverty, hunger, and social injustice." One of its great resources that pertains to local food purchasing at colleges is its 'Buy Local: Food and Farm Toolkit:' http://www.oxfamamerica.org/pdfs/food_farm_toolkit.pdf

"Community Food Security Coalition." Community Food Security Coalition. 10 April 2005. April 2005 www.foodsecurity.org

The Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) is an organization that is dedicated to building strong, sustainable, local and regional food systems that ensure access to food for all people at all times. The organization has a 'National Farm to College' program works with projects across the country (U.S.) to organize workshops, conferences and resources that provide information about making purchasing relationships between colleges and local farmers work. (The woman in charge of this program is Kristen Markley: kristen@foodsecurity.org or (570) 658-2265).

"WHY- Food Security Learning Center." Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service of the US Department of Agriculture. April 2005 http://www.worldhungeryear.org/fslc/faqs/ria_071a.asp?section=6&click=4