This Wednesday, on the steps of Wilder Hall, President Krislov approved a commitment to join the Real Food Challenge and make Oberlin Campus Dining Services 40 percent “real food” by 2020. “Real food” is food that fits into one or more of four categories described by the Real Food Challenge: local-based, fair, ecologically sound and humane. The Real Food challenge, a nationwide nonprofit organization, is asking colleges and universities across the nation to commit to 20 percent real food by 2020. Colleges and universities currently purchase five billion dollars of food every year, and by shifting one fifth, or $1 billion, of that spending to responsible food providers, Real Food Challenge hopes to harness “the power of youth and universities to create a healthy, fair and green food system,” according to its website.

College senior Kevin Dee and College juniors Zettie Shapey, Elena Makansi and Brenna Sheldon have been working on an audit over the last semester to see how much real food CDS caterer Bon Appétit is currently serving on campus. In the month of September, 24.87 percent of purchased food qualified as real food, prompting the group to set the 2020 Real Food Challenge goal at 40 percent, tying Oberlin with the University of California, Santa Cruz for the highest real food commitment.

“We care about sustainability,” said President Krislov. “This is a great initiative and we’re fully behind it. … We’re 100 percent behind 40 percent.”

A working group in Student Senate, which will run for the next seven years, will create a campus food policy and an action plan. The working group will be made up of students, in addition to Bon Appétit staff and administrators who will offer a variety of perspectives on responsible eating.

“There’s always an effort to have coalition building and bridging gaps and stuff but since we have these four categories, it really makes concrete the way all of these things play into food, like humane treatment of animals [and] environmental sustainability,” said Dee, fifth-year Classical Guitar Performance and Composition major.

Bringing the Real Food Challenge to Oberlin was partially inspired by a TEDx talk in fall 2011 on farm worker’s rights hosted by Bon Appétit and screened at Oberlin by Slow Food Oberlin. S. K. Piper, an employee at Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation, spoke Wednesday after the initiative signing about the TEDx conference, the Real Food Challenge and Bon Appétit’s commitment to responsible food choices.

“[The issue of farmworkers’ rights is] this very overwhelming problem [that] makes you feel very helpless. So what we did was gather the best minds who were all working on this to have a conversation together,” said Piper. “So TEDx Fruitvale happened in the fall of 2011 and it was the first TED talk just about farmworker rights.”

This TEDx talk started a conversation among students about workers’ rights and humane practices which led to research and eventually the decision, led largely by Dee, to work with the Real Food Challenge to better implement workers’ rights initiatives, among other goals, in campus dining choices.

“CDS and the Bon Appétit staff at Oberlin, if you talk to them, they’re very committed to both listening to students and they’re also committed to having more sustainable food on campus,” said Erin Swenson-Klatt, a senior History and Environmental Studies major and former chair of Slow Food.

Through the cooperation of Bon Appétit, administration and students, Dee hopes the 40 percent “real food” goal will be achieved by 2020 and that even more ambitious goals will be set in the future.

“Hopefully this is something that will continue [and we can] set a new goal when we get to 2020,” said Dee.