Introducing the Trent Food Service Review Committee

Each week a new member of the committee will introduce themselves in their own words.  This is the sixth introduction of eight.

Hello!  My name is Jamie McDonald.

I am the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) representative on the Trent University Food Service Review Committee.  There are over 350 OPSEU members employed at Trent University taking care of the details in support roles ranging from secretarial to carpentry, from information technology to animal care.  To try to represent such a broad group is humbling and to try to do so accurately is a challenge.  The task is made easier in the understanding that every OPSEU member comes to work each day wanting to make the university better in whatever way they can and it is this spirit of communal improvement that guides me on this committee.

I am excited to be on this committee as I believe that if you look after the details, the details will look after you.  Trent University is known as a place that cares deeply about social and environmental justice.  Trent did not get that reputation by clever marketing, but by the cumulative effect of conscious daily individual choices of those within our university community over the last 50 years. As food is a basic building block of life, and our need for it constant, our choices concerning it ripple far and wide, within our bodies, across campus, in our local community and environment, and across the globe.  In the business of life, food often becomes an overlooked detail, but it may be the most tangible place of choice any of us have to put our desires for social and environmental justice into action.  I believe that is why so many people at Trent are passionate about food; why we banned water bottles on campus, why we attend fundraisers for root cellars (and dance for joy at them), why we are in the last push to make our campus a fair trade campus, why we are now offering a bachelor of arts or science in sustainable agriculture and food systems.  Food is a linchpin detail.  I am excited to be on this committee as if we can get this detail right, the true river that flows through Trent, social and environmental justice, gains strength and runs deeper.

All this typing has made me hungry, time for my favourite, time for an apple.