(The Beacon)
By Will Lyons, Staff Commentary -- The Beacon
If any series of events could encapsulate the spirit of the University of Portland in a nutshell, it was this past weekend. Between Relay for Life, the Food for Thought conference and Christie Hall's 100th birthday, UP strutted its stuff and left little room for wondering what is important to our students and community.
UP stands for very simple themes really: Allow people to live, educate people about real world obstacles and have fun with friends while you're doing it.
On Saturday, I kept walking past the academic quad expecting the Relay for Life to be over and for people to just stop walking. But no, late into the night there were still students walking around and around and around, underscoring the notion that cancer doesn't give up easily and neither will we.
What is it that allows us to keep on going, to keep making endless laps in a somewhat dull surrounding? Friends.
The walkers were grouped in packs when I walked past them at 10 p.m. Saturday. They were happy, joking and still smiling after hours of walking. With this in mind, I walked over to the east quad where Christie Hall was beginning its 100-year birthday celebration. One hundred years of friendship have happened in Christie. One hundred years of random people from all over the world meeting each other, awkwardly picking beds and closets space and hanging out playing ping pong. UP stands for friendship.
A few hours earlier, we heard Michael Pollan speak in the Chiles Center. One of Pollan's major goals is to keep people healthy. Who knows, maybe if Americans were able to "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants," cancer would not be the killer it is today. UP stands for simply staying alive to the best of your ability.
A lot of people didn't know who Pollan was before this event, and indeed could care less about his message and the goals of food sustainability that have been a major theme this year since the opening of the Bauccio Commons. Students talk smack about The Commons prices, long lines and unnecessarily fancy food. Sometimes these criticisms are well founded, but you've got to give UP credit for standing for something and following through on its messages. Obviously eating healthy was an ideological goal for this year. But even if I'm not changed by anything that's happened over the past eight months, I appreciate the effort to make a statement. UP stands for you standing up.
If I took anything away from this week's Food for Thought conference and Pollan's speech it was this: In many ways it doesn't matter what you stand for as long as you stand for something.
Pollan got the ball rolling on reform of the industrial food complex and he was fairly outspoken at the outset of his project. As a journalist, he could've picked a topic like warfare as his personal wedge issue. He would have been well supported, but his voice would have been drowned out by the masses of others calling for similar change. Pollan stands for something not as many people find noteworthy and made food rights an issue by putting it to public scrutiny in a way that everyone can understand.
Isn't that one of the reasons we're all at college to begin with? Maybe the real goal of these years is to find what it is you want to stand for and figure out whom you want to stand with you. Pollan's passion is food, and if we all had that much enthusiasm for whatever issue grinds our gears ,we would put the world into total chaos. It's that chaos that makes being here inspiring. All that remains is letting it loose.
Will Lyons is a freshman English major. He can be contacted at lyons14@up.edu.
(Alissa White -- The Beacon)
