Abstract

Providing multicultural food helps increase the campus diversity and create a climate of inclusiveness.

Issue

With the move of all freshman housing to North Campus, food for students with special dietary needs is more difficult to provide, because alternate food service is not available there. Furthermore, students at the Center for Jewish Living were spending an inordinate amount of time managing the Kosher Dining Hall (KDH). Cornell Dining has taken over responsibility for the KDH, recently renamed 104 West, and incorporated kosher dining into the new NorthStar facility in Appel Commons.

Response

Working with Campus Life under the leadership of Vice President Susan Murphy, a faculty/staff/student committee put together a program that transferred responsibility for kosher dining to Cornell Dining. In addition, a program of food service on North Campus has evolved, and a Multi-Cultural Kosher Dining Program statement and protocol has been put into place that provides information to many alternate stakeholders. This is now on the Cornell Dining website and has been shared with a number of other colleges and universities. Full implementation has not been achieved, but the ban on alcohol in cooking and food preparation has been implemented. Continuous involvement to maintain and improve the program continues.

Impact

The Multi-Cultural Kosher Dining Program has provided new food experiences for freshmen for two years and has been used to provide Ramadan meals for Muslim students. The challenge for the future is to accommodate more students on campus as part of the ongoing efforts to improve diversity. The next step is to promote student use of the 104 West facility by publicizing its renaming and the removal of surcharges on regular meals for students on the meal planin order. The facility at NorthStar was revamped to be exclusively "meat" and this has been well received. The Muslim community, in particular, is using this facility. Programs such as the JAM (Jews, Arabs, Muslims) dialogue have benefited by the availability of kosher and halal-acceptable meals in a pleasant, modern campus facility.

Funding Sources

• Academic Programs Instructional Support (e.g., Institutional Challenge, Multicultural Scholars, Nat'l Needs, Hispanic Ed)
• Campus Life

Collaborators

• VP Susan Murphy and Campus Life staff
• Colleen Wright-Riva and Cornell Dining staff
• David Innerst and FLIK employees
• Students, faculty, and staff involved in teh committees putting the program together

Key Personnel

• N/A