SACC Raises Awareness About Climate Change Among Choate Community Students Host Local Foods Dinner
By Michelle Nam ’10
News Reporter
On Friday, October 26, the Students Against Climate Change (SACC) hosted a “Local Foods” dinner at Ruuts-Reez, where thirty or so students gathered to enjoy great-tasting local delicacies and a screening of the movie “The Day after Tomorrow.” Elizabeth Gribkoff ’09 and Sofia Gearty ’09, co-presidents of the organization, had made arrangements with Aramark to provide foods created entirely from nearby orchards and farms. The dishes were all excellent: the meal started with apple cider and butternut squash soup, which were followed by grilled chicken with apples and onions. According to some, the desserts were the best part, with apple crumbles, apple pie, and homemade ice cream. The apples and cider were provided by Lyman Orchards, a farm in Middlefield to the northeast of Choate. Riley Mellon ’10 said that the chicken was among “the best I’ve ever eaten,” and Emanne Saleh ’10 agreed that “This food is organic and local yet very tasty.”
SACC is a relatively new club to Choate. It started out last year as an unofficial group of fourth formers, and became an official group this year. The co-presidents decided to create this club after watching Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth.” Despite the political controversy still surrounding the subject, they believe that global warming and climate change are a serious problem, and decided to create a club promoting awareness and action. The movie shown at the dinner, “The Day After Tomorrow,” also gave a similar message about the dangers of climate change: the scenario involves the whole world freezing due to rapid glacier melting.
The local foods dinner was SACC’s first major event, and the co-presidents were very excited about the great turnout. Throughout the year, they hope to continue to host events and speak to the student body, hopefully once every two weeks, to raise awareness about climate change.
The logic behind the idea of a local foods dinner involved raising awareness of the fact that buying and eating local foods helps reduce the amount of carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere. Gribkoff said, “Many people don’t realize that buying foods from faraway places greatly contributes to the amount of carbon emission. If we ate fruit that came from Canada or Mexico, or even California, the transportation causes much more pollution than getting fruit from nearby places.” Gearty added, “There are ways that you can get the same quality goods at similar prices, but local. Buying these local foods is much more helpful to the environment. We wanted to raise people’s awareness of this fact.” SACC plans to donate the money raised by this event to an environmental group selected by the members by vote. Two of the clubs suggested were a voluntary organization in New Haven that sets up trash bins around the city and an organization set up by recent Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, which specializes in controlling greenhouse gases.
Cynthia Deng ’10, who greatly enjoyed the dinner, commented, “I think this is a really successful idea in that it provided really good food and a served a good purpose. Not a lot of people would have thought that eating locally would help change the world, but it really makes a difference.”
