“We founded Smith Students for Food Justice to ask President McCartney to sign the Real Food Challenge Commitment.”

I became involved in the national campaign Real Food Challenge (RFC) as a sophomore. As a sustainable food concentrator, another student and I audited Smith's food purchases to determine how much "real" food, based on the RFC’s definition, it was buying. The figure we calculated was nine percent. We then founded Smith Students for Food Justice to continue the research and to ask President McCartney to sign the Real Food Challenge Commitment. In the fall of 2016, she committed the college to working toward spending at least 20 percent of Smith’s annual dining dollars on real food by 2020 and to supporting the creation of a Food Systems Working Group. Smith Students for Food Justice furthers the goal of bringing real food to Smith in several ways: Members serve on the working group, lead campus discussions on food justice and empowerment, and collaborate with CEEDS and other student groups, such as SCOPES and Divest Smith College.