Near the end of my workday today I gave my e-mail one final check and discovered that a, shall we say, “critical” review of Stanford Dining’s new pilot “trayless dining” policy had been published in the Daily. After muttering a few frustrated expletives to my co-worker, I soon resigned myself to the fact that if someone hates the idea of trayless dining then it is not their fault. If anything, it is a sign of my failure as someone fighting to increase the resilience and sustainability of our society in the face of, let’s be honest, some crazy environmental shit.

As such, here is my educational two cents about the infamous dining hall tray.

The facts about trayless dining at Stanford (and why not using trays is a good thing):

1) You can have a tray if you need one/want one/desire one/passionately lust for one in the fashion of the Stanford student who wrote the aforementioned article found here http://www.stanforddaily.com/cgi-bin/?p=1033368 .

2) Trayless dining is a pilot program of Stanford Dining based on a survey of approximately 500 Stanford students completed last spring. It’s part of their well-established Love Food, Hate Waste Campaign. It has been planned with rationality and care, and is not what I would define as a radical move.

3) Trays = unnecessary waste. You and I both know that it’s easy to trudge home for dinner at the end of the day and totally load up on all-you-can-eat munchies, only to realize five minutes in that you will probably vomit if you consume everything on your plate. Excess food = waste of water/energy/land resources + unnecessary carbon dioxide emissions (both due to the food production process, and due to the emissions that go along with dealing with food waste). No tray = less likely to take too much food. Logical. Beneficial. End of story.

4) No trays = saves water (they say it takes half a gallon to wash one tray one time) = saves money for Stanford Dining = they have other money to do things like buy good food and keep staff on board.

5) Trayless dining is an awareness campaign. It is visible. It is personal. It may not have huge effects on our school’s water consumption, but it makes Stanford students think a little more about the resources they consume in a one-way, irreversible manner (RANDOM FACT: the freshwater we use at Stanford is treated and expelled to SF bay, a saltwater body, and is not reused). If this is not apparent enough, then it’s on us – the students who care about it – to step up and help Dining advertise the reasons behind their apparently appalling traylessness.

I could throw a bunch of statistics/official-ish facts at you to back all this stuff up (feel free to contact me if you would like them – elainea1@stanford.edu); but I will refrain.

The moral of the story is, if you can’t deal with going without trays in your dining hall then maybe you should sit down for a chat with one of the tropical climate refugees who has already lost their home and livelihood due to permanent island inundation. Or maybe you should talk to your children in fifty years and explain to them why the Colorado River and the Sierra Snowpack are no longer able to provide water to the Californian public. Or maybe you should consider the facts, consider your morals, and readjust your position on trayless dining accordingly.

Today's Daily front cover prominently features a very interesting story about Azia Kim's involvement in ROTC, but the biggest news of the day--that Stanford is joining the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) and the Fair Labor Association (FLA)--received no notice on the news pages, and was relegated to a long op-ed by President Hennessy.

The WRC is a consortium of colleges pledging to ensure sweatshop labor is not used to produce licensed apparel with their logos, with a governing board split evenly among university administrators, representatives of United Students Against Sweatshops, and human and labor rights experts. Their website has a list of useful FAQs. (One thing to note, in particular, is that the WRC requires participating colleges to pay 1% of their gross licensing revenues up to a maximum of $50,000. I'd be curious to know how much that would end up being for Stanford.) The FLA, by contrast, is an organization with more corporate influence; according to its website, it's a "multi-stakeholder coalition" of corporations, universities, and NGOs. Hennessy makes a good point in his op-ed that an optimal solution would have both labor activists and corporations working together in one organization; I imagine that either side would be very distrustful of an organization dominated by the other side.

Notably, Hennessy said that Stanford will not join the DSP, or Designated Suppliers Program, an additional program of the WRC that takes a significantly more activist role in ensuring sweatfree labor. In this program, universities are obligated to shift their licensed apparel (over a several year period) into factories which primarily produce college apparel. The argument is that doing so ensures that the colleges will have significant negotiating power. (Technically, the DSP will allow factories in which less than 50% of the apparel is from colleges, so long as the rest of the apparel comes from makers that will abide by the DSP's standards, but that seems unlikely.)

Update: The eleven arrested students were brought to the Stanford police station, processed and immediately released. The official reason for their detention was reportedly trespassing. A group representative said that everyone is doing okay. Also, the Facebook group expressing outrage at the arrests has 98 members as of 11:20pm; Hershey Avula, ASSU President, is listed as a group admin.

After the raucous Sweat-Free rally and sit-in held today, eleven students were apparently arrested by the Stanford police. The campaign website, which featured a live blog with entries and photos throughout the day, says nothing about why the students were arrested, or whether or not they are actually being held. Nonetheless, the students sound outraged about the way they were treated by the administration and the police today, emphasizing repeatedly that they were not allowed to use the bathroom during the sit-in at the President's office, even though they would have been barred re-entry should they have attempted to venture outside of Building 10 for other facilities.

A Facebook group protesting the arrests was created less than an hour ago and already has about 28 members. In addition, a vigil for garment workers will be held at 8PM in White Plaza.

Um, did anyone in the administration think arresting students was going to help with the PR damage control effort?

Students turned out in droves to support the rally earlier today, which was meant to secure guarantees from the administration that Stanford clothing would not be produced using sweatshop labor.

In another strange twist of events, the short SF Chronicle article on the student rally seems strangely fixated on the fact that a few of the students were naked, noting "The naked protesters were a bit shy, and several were covering their private parts." Mkayyy...

This Sweat-Free rally follows closely on the heels of the Stanford Labor Action Coalition's Living Wage campaign, which resulted in significant concessions and a substantial press response from the University.

What is the explanation for the dramatic uptick in student activism? Interestingly, activism on campus seems increasingly oriented toward making Stanford a model citizen on the world stage. Recent examples include not only these two labor-focused issues, but additionally the successful Darfur divestment campaign, the Confronting Apartheid by Israel divestment campaign, and the broad campus sustainability movement that, among other things, is trying to get the University to commit to capping and reducing its emissions of carbon dioxide. Add that to recent publicity about the University's cooperation with groups of decidedly evil people, like ExxonMobile (see here, here, here, and here) and the tobacco industry, and the Stanford administration just doesn't seem to be providing the kind of moral leadership our students (and alumni and faculty, as the case may be) expect.

Today is day 8 of the fast, and the situation is getting a bit more critical. One of the fasters has been feeling sick and is checking into Vaden today.

We met with representatives from Human Resources and Procurement departments today. We were able to come to some agreements about issues pertaining to transparency, and the head of HR conceded our points on a couple of issues related to restrictions on the living wage. However, she maintained that she had no authority to lift these restrictions and that the President would have to do so. We're hopeful that Hennessy will listen to reason, not to mention to the voices of the hundreds of you who have manifested your support. The more support you show, the sooner we meet again with Hennessy!

SLAC marched from the Activities Fair today to MemAud, where President Hennessy was giving a speech. They did not disrupt the speech, but rather sat on the front steps of the building and sang and chanted.

The Daily also ran two interesting point and counterpoint editorials today on what SLAC is calling for.

SLAC marched this evening with about fifty supporters from White Plaza to Hennessy's office in the Main Quad, where SLAC and the President met at 5PM to discuss the group's demands for a Real Living Wage. To pass the time while SLAC and the President met, representatives from groups sympathetic to the cause gave speeches followed by more chanting.

Hennessy and SLAC met for about an hour, after which the students emerged and announced that another meeting would be held the following day. The University also released a statement this evening clarifying some of the University's difficulties in implementing a living wage policy for everyone affiliated with Stanford:

The students were reminded that there are hundreds-perhaps thousands-of contracts put in place each year. Some are for very small dollar amounts or are one-time contracts that last only a short time. University officials have stated that it would be nearly impossible to monitor this number of contracts or would require unreasonable additional resources to implement this level of monitoring.

For now, SLAC's fast continues. Read on for more video from SLAC and a list of attending groups.

As you’ve no doubt noticed, the SLAC fasters are no longer occupying the Main Quad. At around 5:30 p.m. yesterday, after at least 3 uniformed and 2 undercover police surrounded the fasters’ tent encampment, negotiations regarding the occupation of the Main Quad began between various administrators and SLAC. The administrators, including Nanci Howe and Maureen Powers, told the fasters that they would be able meet with President Hennessy on Monday but did not give a specific meeting time. As SLAC members caucused about holding the Main Quad and increasing pressure on Hennessy, Maureen Powers made a phone call to the President and secured a 5 p.m. meeting time.

Sorry for the delay between updates, today has been really big and busy. This morning we packed up our tents and left our space in White Plaza. We did this both to avoid causing a disruption to a student group that had planned to use the space, and more importantly, because we had a better place to be.

We are currently occupying the space in the Main Quad directly in front of Hennessy's office. So far he has not agreed to meet with us, so we're trying to make it so that at least he can't avoid seeing us outside.

A quick summary of how we got here: Today we had our big barbecue/rally for workers, students, and community members. While people were grilling and eating, two fasters and two organizers went to a speech by Hennessy to hold a banner demanding that he meet with us and to pass out flyers to attendees.

As soon as we arrived, Nanci Howe and multiple police officers surrounded us and threatened to arrest us. We hadn't been planning on interrupting the speech, but they were yelling so loud that a lot of people were distracted. Once they calmed down, we stood by the side of the speech and held the banner, and then flyered near the end. At this point, even simple things like holding up a banner have become difficult for the fasters.

Afterwards, we held the rally part of event, including speeches from union leaders, a faster, and the 6 new people who joined the fast today. We had a great turnout and the speeches really fired people up. We then marched past the crowds of people here for Community Day to Hennesy's office and set up our tents while police and administrators ran around trying to figure out what we might be doing. I think that they were scared we were going to occupy the actual office.

Today has been very exciting. Even though the fasters might not be physically strong right now, seeing the level of support and our own power has given us a lot of emotional strength, and we're prepared to carry on as long as necessary.

Right now, we're still moving stuff into our new camp. I'll try to write more and post more pictures and videos as soon I can.

Hey everybody, we've been fasting and camping out in White Plaza since Thursday. We're going to keep going until the university agrees to follow up on its rhetoric and pay all Stanford workers a living wage. We'll try to use this space to keep people updated about what's going on and how we're doing. You can also check out our website. Anyway, I'll try to put a real post later today when I get some time.

Why are students fasting?