By Lily Raff
News Editor

Members of Wesleyan’s Animal Rights Network (WARN) and E3, a campus environmental group, began petitioning outside the campus center Monday afternoon to convince ARAMARK to improve the labeling of vegetarian and vegan foods.

"It’s not intended to be a hostile thing; we’re just trying to show ARAMARK that... it really affects a lot of students whether or not food is labeled...," said Dan Shannon ’01, a WARN representative who organized the movement.

Shannon said that during an October 4 meeting, students and ARAMARK representatives agreed that every vegetarian and vegan food offered on campus would be labeled by October 18.

Senior Food Service Director Sherwood Lincoln said he does not recall promising that the labels would be in place by then.

"We all made the agreement that we would try to get some sort of [labeling] program together by the eighteenth," Lincoln said.

"I think we’re probably a little bit behind the eight-ball on getting things labeled," he continued. "But we are certainly working on it and we recognize the importance of it."

By Monday night, Shannon said he still had not noticed many newly-labeled foods.

"In Mocon, I know they labeled the veggie burgers as vegetarian and the veggie dogs as vegan; I think that’s new," he said. "Other than that, we didn’t notice any changes."

Lincoln said the labeling has been delayed because a computer template for the labels is not yet complete.

"We wanted to make sure that it was a pretty solid [labeling] program, and... that we had a consistent program across campus.," he explained.

Shannon said he doubts ARAMARK’s explanation of the delay.

"I’m pretty disappointed," he said. "It’s just kind of disheartening to realize that they don’t take us very seriously."

Lincoln said he understands the students’ concerns and wants to meet their requests.

"We’re still working on it, but we have given [dining service workers] some temporary signs that they can use just to outline things that they know are vegetarian and vegan," Lincoln said.

He added that he is surprised more vegetarian and vegan dishes have not been labeled by now, using the temporary signs.

Nearly all vegetarian and vegan dishes should be properly labeled by the end of the week, according to Lincoln.

"Our ultimate goal is to have everything labeled, not just vegetarian and vegan items, but everything; [labeled] with nutritional analysis and that sort of thing. That’s the program that we’re working on overall," he said.

Shannon said the petition is valuable even if it is not needed to convince ARAMARK representatives.

"I just want to show them how important this is to people, so that... even if they do get [the labels] up by the end of the week, they keep them up..." he explained. "It’s still important because... people have said, you know, they’ll [label foods] for a day or two, and then they’ll just stop."

More than 100 students signed the petition on Monday between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. in front of the Campus Center, according to Shannon. He said WARN will continue to collect signatures at the same time and place all week.