Above, posters in Blanchard Dining Commons thank Dining Services staff. Photo by Zeyu Zhao ‘27.
By Charlotte Cai ’24
Contributing Writer
Locally sourced fresh vegetables, directly delivered from nearby farms and processed and prepared on-campus. Continuous menu development, maximizing ingredient utility and taste. Intake of student feedback through in-person conversation and Google Forms. Historically innovative plant-based options. Reusable takeout containers. Food scraps composted into topsoil at 360 Recycling and Martin’s Farm Compost and Mulch.
According to Associate Director of Culinary Operations, Shawn Kelsey, the life cycle of food in the Dining Commons integrates thoughtfulness into every strand of the process — from sourcing, preparation, and cooking to sustainability. For observant students like Zainab Mustafa ’26 and on-campus climate justice organizations, too often, this care is not reciprocated.
It’s an old story: an easy scapegoat, bonding over shared complaints. One bad experience with the food in Blanchard Dining Commons — or as students call it, “Blanch” — may set off an unmoving stance of antipathy for the rest of one’s time at Mount Holyoke.
Perhaps, as Zoey Pickett ’26 believes, this models the post-consumer waste that students produce — food taken onto our plates and thrown out at the end of the meal. Pickett is a Miller Worley Community Sustainability Coordinator and works on both its food waste and geothermal projects. She also coordinated the Dining Hall Appreciation Week signage using Miller Worley research. “Food waste is a big problem at Mount Holyoke, especially post-production food waste,” Pickett said.
According to Kelsey, although the dining staff weighs and tracks pre-consumer food waste like kitchen scraps, most food waste at the College is a product of student creation. As Pickett cited for Dining Hall Appreciation Week signage, the Miller Worley Center for the Environment estimates that an average student’s meal generates approximately 5 ounces of post-consumer waste and 2 ounces of pre-consumer waste — totaling around 19 tons of uneaten, post-consumer food waste generated per month.
“It’s not just food, it’s not just money, it’s a resource … the farmer’s time, the water, the gasoline on the vehicle that it took to get it here and then the energy that it took to store it, the energy that took to prepare it and all of those things compounded upon the fact that that was also food that might be getting wasted,” Kelsey explained.
Beyond the abundance of a ready-to-eat food buffet, Mount Holyoke students belong and contribute to the larger food ecosystem through our dining hall, campus grounds and the greater New England system. Maya Bisram ’25 described this ecosystem to MHN. “All of these food spaces are interconnected, and there is mutual respect between the farmer, the chef and the recipient,” they said.
For Lily Nemirovsky ’24, building interpersonal connections of “care and thoughtfulness” with food and the people who provide it improves our collective experience — students, dining staff and farmers included. In an interview with Mount Holyoke News, Nemirovsky explained that “establishing that human connection and somehow getting students to know how much work and thought gets put into our food could play a really big part.”
Don’t like the way Blanch chefs have prepared something? Have feedback on adjusting a dish to your taste preferences? Kelsey encourages students to “ask [chefs] questions, tell them what you need; we’re here to provide for this community.” If you prefer anonymous feedback, Blanch houses QR codes at multiple locations, Kelsey added.
Beyond the individual level, students around Mount Holyoke have partnered in advocacy and education efforts around on-campus food waste. A few weeks ago, Miller Worley’s Community Sustainability Coordinators and members from the MHC Climate Justice Coalition and Growing Vines Collective teamed up for Dining Hall Appreciation Week. They created sustainability signage, social media posts, staff appreciation posters and collected survey data to analyze the root causes of food waste.
Nemirovsky, CJC’s lead organizer, told MHN how the immediacy of food waste has compelled her work because the issue is “so local and present in all of our lives.” She learned that “by knowing what is being done, we also know what isn’t being done, so we can then find the space to bring our own ideas in.”
Mustafa also shared how her work designing an educational module for first-year seminar students has reinforced an understanding of “eating out of respect for not only dining workers but everyone involved within the process.”
For her, wasting food — even half a glass of leftover soda — was not a habit until she had arrived at college. Now, she is busy unlearning how she approaches food service at Blanch. Through her work and “this entire process of actually realizing how much effort and how much time … is actually being put into the food created, I think that strongly has reinforced this idea of … eating as a sign of respect,” Mustafa said.
Bisram, who has been researching composting and raised-bed garden opportunities with Sustainability Program Manager Angie Gregory, described her understanding of campus culture to MHN. “We are all a part of the Mount Holyoke community; our successes and losses are a shared experience,” she said.
For many students like Pickett, Blanch is more than food — it represents some of her fondest times at Mount Holyoke with her friends. She shared that she “see[s] it mainly as a place to socialize. … A lot of times, the best parts of my day are sitting down and eating a meal with my friends.”
According to these students, at the core of their food experience is an expression of care and interconnectedness, which can be lost or forgotten in the hectic day-to-day student life. For students, care is an antidote expressed through thoughtful action at the individual level each and every day, Bisram shared, reflecting that “centering love and community is essential to change.”
Kelsey spoke on behalf of the dining staff, emphasizing, “That’s what our purpose is here, [it’s] taking care of all of you and making sure that there’s healthy, nutritional [and] delicious foods.” In return, the least and best students can do is reciprocate what has been given to them, with care.
Students interested in learning more can join the community Community Commitment to Climate Justice meeting hosted by Miller Worley Center on Saturday, May 4 at 9 a.m. in the Willits-Hallowell Conference Center. The event will include dining staff, groundskeepers, academics, students and administrators invested in the collective food experience.