Unfortunately for myself, I will not be attending the University of New Haven next year. With my time here, I wanted to bring forth some new challenges. I was thinking of ways we could improve our school.

One thing I wanted to look into was the donation of excess food to homeless shelters. When we finish our food at Bartels, what happens to it? What happens to all the food they cook when no one takes it? I understand that we are not going to scrape our plates and give our leftovers to the homeless, but what about the food that no one ever gets served to them? I feel we should come up with a system to donate it.

Another thing I had in mind was to create a greenhouse or some way to grow our own food. A lot of my friends go to school in the middle of nowhere, but one of my friends goes to school at Green Mountain College in Vermont. There, they have their own farm where they grow their own food. I think this would be a cool idea to have; however, I am not sure that we would be able to have the same growing power that Vermont’s climate does. That’s where the idea of a greenhouse comes in. Maybe we can grow little things that we use in every food dish, like garlic, onions, lettuce, tomatoes, etc…

Another idea was that the food that we do scrape off our plates can maybe become a compost pile. We must waste so much food here at this school, and I just think it would be a good idea to be able to use these things to our advantage. I was eating brunch the other day and my friend asked why they were using plastic plates. They were so concerned because plastic takes years to decompose. I said it’s better than the Styrofoam plates they sometimes use in replacement for the regular plates. Plastic takes a long time to decompose, but Styrofoam never really decomposes.

I just wish we could work towards a greener environment here at UNH. On campus we have clubs dedicated to this journey, and I only wish I could help if and when I am able to return to campus.

I also wish we could have a bit more community service just for the fun of it. I think we should try to help out children in orphanages or in hospitals. We can give them makeovers, give them baskets, or just have a karaoke night so they can get away from their troubles. Everyone could use a break from stress, and I think activities like this would be a fun way to do so.