As a senior at AU, I am no stranger to our school's attempts to demonstrate tolerance for "alternative" foods and lifestyles by shoving far left ideology down our throats. This time however, the university is literally doing just that.
Bon Appetit, AU's official food service (the company that gives us those questionable delectables in TDR), in its attempt to develop an "environmentally friendly" food service, has been attempting to gain the praise of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a not-so-mainstream "animal rights" group. By minimizing an already lackluster selection of meat products with vegan "alternatives" and enacting a PR campaign in TDR designed to encourage people to adopt a "vegetarian lifestyle" not just for your health, but for the environment and natural resources, AU seems to hope that food will set us free.
Let us put aside the Orwellian concept of coercing, I mean, convincing people to adopt an "alternative" lifestyle by limiting actual alternatives to said lifestyle and alleging it will "free" us from our environmental consumption for a moment. This latest effort by AU, encouraging students to celebrate their desire for PETA's affection by voting to make AU the most vegetarian college in the nation, is yet another reflection of AU's indifference to groups whose "good intentions" leads them to aid and abet terrorists.
You would think that AU's unique history with PETA, such as when PETA terrorist Rodney Coronado came to AU in 2003 for the National Conference on Organized Resistance and taught AU students how to make environmentally friendly bombs in the Ward Circle Building, along with the ensuing U.S. Senate investigation, would have given AU a moment's pause that maybe, just maybe, using student resources to promote a far left agenda in the name of "tolerance" would be counter-productive. Apparently groups that equate caged animals with Holocaust death camps, giving off the not-so-subtle implication that humans are in no way distinct from animals while totally ignoring the Nazis' obsession with a "vegetarian lifestyle" is what's worth student resources, and student obedience in the dining hall. A real respect for "alternative" food options would not celebrate "diverse" foods by catering to AU's vegetarian majority. Once again, AU has confused questions of free speech and diversity with questions of judgment. And once again, AU's judgment has led it to use its students to improve its "street cred" with far left extremists.
William J. Haun Senior, School of Public Affairs and former President of the AU College Republicans
