BY APOLLINE BERTY

In print | November 15, 2007

The Animal Rights Coalition hosted a College Veg Pledge celebration for students in order to bring awareness to animal rights violations committed by the meat industry and to encourage students to experience the vegetarian lifestyle, even if only for one day.

The College Veg Pledge day was observed on college campuses across the nation, and ARC organized efforts within the Swarthmore community.

As featured on the Students for Animal Rights Web site, the pledge said: “As a university student, I realize that I am a leader for my generation and an example for society. I am concerned about the inherent cruelty of consuming animals for food and the impact meat has on global warming, the environment, and my health. By signing my name, I pledge to abstain from consuming meat on November 13, 2007, and commit myself to exploring a more ethical diet in the future.”

The Veg Pledge consists of students pledging to not eat meat for a day, as an impetus to try out a vegetarian diet.

Swarthmore’s ARC also organized a gathering in Shane Lounge at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 13, with vegan sweets such as “Death By Chocolate and Peanut Butter” vegan cheesecake, vegan chocolate chip cookies and soy milk.

The event in Shane Lounge also displayed several brochures and stickers encouraging students to consider a vegetarian diet.

“People were attracted by the food I think and then stuck around to look at the materials. There was a pretty good crowd, I was happy about it,” said ARC member Andrew Van Buren ‘10. After the food disappeared, the ARC showed some amusing clips about animal rights. “We started off with some vegetarian cooking videos, just to show some good-looking vegetarian food,” Van Buren said. "That wasn’t setting the mood, so we turned on ‘The Meatrix,’ which is a short cartoon about how meat’s produced, and ‘Cows with Guns,’ which is this fun thing about cows with guns."

“I think an effective way to have people realize that it’s not really that hard to follow a vegetarian diet, that just by giving up a few, not even giving up food, but trying something new,” ARC president Claudia Seixas ‘10 said. "So, it’s a way of helping people to open their own minds to the idea of following a vegetarian diet." Seixas also explained that the Veg Pledge applied to those who were already vegetarian as it was a chance for them to try a vegan diet.

A number of other colleges are involved in this effort, including Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Stanford and other universities. “I think the numbers show how many people are behind this and the idea of having a bunch of colleges doing it and posting how many people they had is kind of competition to get more people and it’s just a more definitive system,” Seixas said.

Both Seixas and Brian Tomasik ’09 mentioned that ARC would continue to host events promoting vegetarianism in the future.

“We have planned to do more cooking demonstrations … the idea would be to cook together with other people who haven’t done vegetarian cooking before to give them a chance to see that it’s not that hard,” Tomasik said.

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