Last year, the Frizzell Family Speaker and Learning Series focused on the intersection of health and food. Similar to previous years, the 2016-2017 Frizzell Committee chose to organize a two-part event: an activity that engaged directly with the community and a speaker event that centered on that year’s theme. For last year’s community engagement, the Frizzell Series partnered with the University Community Service Center (UCSC) to participate in the First Friday Social Change Forum Series and to co-sponsor the April Day of Service. The keynote speaker address, featuring UChicago alumnus Sam Kass and WBEZ reporter Monica Eng, was co-sponsored by Earth Day’s participating organizations and the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics. Below are some highlights from this year’s events and partnerships.
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First Friday Social Change Forum on Health and the Environment
On Friday, April 7, 2017, the University Community Service Center (UCSC) of the Office of Civic Engagement hosted the 20th Anniversary First Friday Social Change Forum on Health & Environment at the School of Social Service Administration (SSA), “How Can We Make Health Access a Human Right in Chicago?” The panel included: Quentin Mables, Co-Executive Director, I Grow Chicago; Doriane Miller, MD ’83; UChicago Associate Professor of Medicine, Director, Center for Community Health and Vitality; Juliana Pino, AB ’08, Policy Director, Little Village Environmental Justice Organization. The student-led Frizzell Family Speaker and Learning Series tabled at the event and provided the 40+ guests with opportunities to engage with their environmental, agriculture, and food justice programming.
The panelists’ discussion pointed to some of the most complex and unyielding questions surrounding food access and health in America today, questions we hope the Frizzell Committee continues to consider. How can trends such as organic food, local production, and urban agriculture be relevant and useful for the communities that need improvements in health outcomes the most? In a time of limited public resources, is a focus on food worth it?
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Day of Service: School Garden Preparation
On Saturday, April 8, the University Community Service Center (UCSC) of the Office of Civic Engagement in partnership with the student-led Frizzell Family Speaker and Learning Series hosted a Day of Service on Food Justice with more than 70 volunteers who contributed service projects at six community gardens in Washington Park, Woodlawn, and Jackson Park.
Ushering in a sunny beginning to the spring, UChicago students from groups including Phoenix Sustainability Initiative and Alpha Phi Omega spent the beautiful Saturday morning getting their hands dirty in neighborhood gardens across the South Side.
Members from the Frizzell and Zero-Waste Committees visited Shoesmith Elementary on 51st Street, whose gardening efforts are headed by the Pereira family. With more than 350 kids, Shoesmith Elementary proudly calls itself an experiential school, in which the curriculum is designed to expose its young students to meaningful settings beyond the classroom, most notably nature. As college students who dedicate the majority of our time indoors studying, the members of the Frizzell Committee were certainly refreshed to see an innate gusto of these young students in embracing the outdoors. From picking up trash to pushing mulch-filled wheelbarrows all on their own, the committee’s younger counterparts infused a spirited, focused energy to the collective gardening efforts.
The Frizzell Committee joined Jonathan Pereira, also Executive Director of the Plant Chicago, in re-laying the bed for the school’s Kindergarten Garden, which has since been planted with a diverse array of vegetables. The first task of the morning was to uproot weeds that had escaped removal from the year before. Once we had stripped the earth of all those pesky plants, we then added fresh mulch to the ground to maintain the integrity of the soil. We ended our day of service with some good old trash-picking on the school perimeters.
There was no better way than this early April day to cultivate eco-friendly habits in our future generations while connecting with a community just outside our campus borders.
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Earth Day and Keynote Speaker Sam Kass
The 2017 Frizzell Speaker and Learning Series culminated on Earth Day, April 22, 2017. Alumnus and former White House Executive Chef Sam Kass (AB ‘04, Lab ‘98) and WBEZ Chicago reporter Monica Eng discussed a variety of issues, including the future of food policy, the youth health crisis, and the intersection of health, climate, and food. On the future of food policy, Mr. Kass expressed that the core of the Obama Administration’s accomplishments will remain intact. Policies are difficult to roll back, and while some legislation may be repealed, Sam is confident that the Obama administration has garnered enough positive momentum behind healthy eating to keep it going.
Hopefully, Mr. Kass is right. Only about two weeks in, the new Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue, already moved to stall notable accomplishments of the Obama administration’s food policies, including the implementation of stricter nutritional guidelines on school lunches and food labeling rules that were included in the Affordable Care Act.
In addition to the role of policy in improving the food and health landscape in America, Mr. Kass stressed the importance of motivating the younger generation to continue the momentum around food. He recognizes that big agriculture companies exist and lobby for their own interests, but he also believes that people need to step up and voice their opinions to fight back against corporate influences on government.
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2016-17 was the most event-packed year to date for the Frizzell Series! The 2017-18 Committee will look forward to deciding the upcoming year’s theme and bringing even more programming to campus. We are inspired by Alexandra Frizzell and deeply indebted to the Frizzell Series for the opportunity to create such exciting and interesting programming on campus. Thanks to all of our partners for an incredible year, and we are excited for the events to come!
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The 2016-17 Frizzell Committee
Leigh Alon
May-May Chen
Annabella Gong
Fatima Khan
Elizabeth McClafferty
Lauren Paulson
Caitlin Piccirillo-Stosser
Megan Verner-Crist
Elaine Yao