The Orbis

Issue date: 9/2/09 Section: News/Features

logo courtesy of VIVA's facebook group

With all dining halls offering vegetarian options and a dedicated vegetarian cafe on campus, perhaps it is surprising that Vanderbilt has gone years without an active vegetarian student organization. The founding members of the Vanderbilt Initiative for Vegetarian Awareness (VIVA) certainly thought so.

That's why at the end of last academic year, juniors Danielle Williams and Shari Rose slogged through bureaucratic red tape to create the first active vegetarian organization on campus since 2004. Thanks to their success, this fall VIVA joined the ranks of the university's more than 300 student organizations to support and promote meat-free diets on campus.

According to the group's mission statement, "Vanderbilt Initiative for Vegetarian Awareness exists for the promotion and dissemination of information relating to a vegetarian/vegan diet and its ethics. VIVA advocates a vegetarian lifestyle and the benefits derived thereof which include the positive effect on human health, avoidance of animal suffering, and an improvement of our planetary environment."

In general, they seek to promote a vegetarian agenda across the whole spectrum of rationale for such a diet, from health reasons to animal rights to matters of efficiency and global sustainability. In harmony with this holistic tone, the group wishes to reach out to other student organizations and to Vanderbilt Dining in order to forge new ties and reinforce existing connections between campus groups with similar agendas.

Williams, the president and founder, summarized her ambitions to bring together diverse social and ethical interests around vegetarianism. "We look forward to working with Grins vegetarian cafe as well as environmental and social justice student organizations on campus, as all of these causes are all intertwined within the vegetarian lifestyle."

Enthusiastic vegetarians are often typecast as overzealous, preachy or pretentious. VIVA wants to foil these stereotypes by opening membership to anybody with an interest in vegetarian or vegan diets, regardless of whether they currently eat meat. "VIVA… is for vegetarians, vegans, and anyone [else] who is curious about a vegetarian lifestyle," said Williams. Rose, the social chair, conceded that she is so vegetarian that she "bleeds tree sap," but openly welcomed anybody with a curiosity in meatless eating.

Continued...

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