By Annalysse Melendez
For those who are interested in joining AEM 3385, within the first few days of class you would be asked the question of “Does Cornell live in a food desert?”The short answer to some may be “No” or “Yes”, but in order to make that judgment you would need to understand what a food desert is and what makes up a food desert. To that I answer it depends on where you grew up in order to make that judgement. For this blog post I ask for your open mind and thoughts and think along with me. As for me, I grew up in the New York city specifically the Bronx, for me a food desert consisted of not having actual access to fresh food and being surrounded by fast food areas, the “fresh” food we had access to would be from the mom and pop shops, however those would expire within a few days or so of buying. This is an experience from someone with an urban background, which could be different from someone that comes from a suburban background/rural.
After discussing with the class this topic I come to realize how it isn’t such a black and white answer, when you realize the environment here at Cornell you notice plenty of things such as the standard we are held up to here and how to achieve their “standard’ while also noticing what Cornell provides as well as not provide. To keep this short, the Cornell Standard is to almost always be busy in fact it is the utmost encouraged to be busy. To this Cornell provides “mental health” services to keep their students in check and or just an outlet to use if need be. It is common for students to be lacking nutritionally due to their lack of time to even consider themselves before work. Another thing to mention would be the benefits of being an underclassmen rather than an upperclassmen, such example would be the matter of Cornell Providing a free bus pass for the year for freshmen but the minute you are a sophomore more bills are added into your already so large bill.
After considering all these factors and most likely more that just have not been stated I ask you the same question. Do you think Cornell lives in a Food Desert? Feel free to openly express your mind and responses!
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