By Shannon Gentry
Vegans live a tough lifestyle preference that’s difficult to maintain as an individual but even more difficult to cater to daily. No cheese, no butter, no eggs and nothing with any animal byproducts period.
Veganism is especially difficult for a college student relying on meal plans and convenient options, and schools that cater to those needs have become more important as the number of vegan students increase.
A younger stem of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), peta2 focuses on college animal lovers. They recently nominated SCAD for this year’s Most Vegan-Friendly College competition. Past winners have included schools such as Wesleyan University, McMaster University, American University and Mount Allison University.
According to Ryan Huling, Assistant Manager of College Campaigns at peta2, the organization bases nominations on quantity and quality of vegan food provided by schools, but also relies on feedback provided by students via Facebook, MySpace and peta2.org.
SCAD fell out of contention, however, during the second round of evaluation to Warren Wilson College, a private liberal arts school near Asheville, North Carolina.
Some students, like Austin Floyd, a second-year graduate writing student know how difficult it can be to find a place to live that offers enough vegan choices.
“I’ve lived in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where there were very few options, and Boston where there were plenty of vegan options,” said Floyd. “I feel that compared to those two places, Savannah’s between the two.”
But even if the city of Savannah is known as moderately vegan friendly with local establishments, such as The Sentient Bean and Brighter Day Grocery, SCAD-based meal plans provide other options for those students on meal plans or living in residential housing.
At SCAD Dining’swebsite, menus providing full nutrition facts and ingredients for Café SCAD and J.O.’s are available.
J.O.’s has all food clearly marked as vegan, vegetarian, low-carb, or other preference. Manager Robert Mitchell will take you through the kitchen to show you the vegetable only grill and meat only grill. His staff can tell you differences between a vegan and a vegetarian, and are more than happy to explain them.
Mitchell didn’t know that SCAD had been nominated as a top Vegan-Friendly Campus, but he wasn’t surprised.
“We provide at least one vegan option at each of our food stations,” Mitchell said as he pointed one of them out. Above each station, a sign indicates the vegan meals and provides a short description.
He’s open to student suggestions and will also show you meal plans that are sent weekly from their corporate chefs, who supply recipes specifically created for vegans and vegetarians in mind.
[Contact fname=”Shannon” lname=”Gentry” email=”sgentr20@student.scad.edu”]
