NYU Officials Address Aramark Firing, ‘Black History Month’ Meal During GCOMMS Meeting
“It was actually explicitly requested that we protect and make certain that there would not be a course of action against the cooks and the frontline staff.”
By Izzie Ramirez and Arimeta Diop
After NYU made national headlines last week for a Black History Month meal that was deemed “insensitive” by university president Andrew Hamilton, NYU’s Center for Multicultural and Educational Programming hosted a talk with Governance Council of Minority and Marginalized Students Friday night.
The group, which allows student clubs to communicate directly with NYU’s administration, discussed a myriad of issues relating to Aramark, the school’s food provider. The company, which provides food service to universities and private prisons across the country, has received criticism from student activist groups in the past for their involvement with private prisons––which was the subject of a PBS investigation that detailed gross abuse in their service in prisons.
In response to the controversial meal — which included ribs, collard greens, watermelon flavored water, and Kool-Aid — Aramark suspended and subsequently fired the head chef and an operations manager at Downstein, both of whom are white, for breaking company protocol, according to Lisa Coleman, the NYU Chief Diversity Officer. The employees were fired without conversation with NYU.
“Part of the reason that management at Aramark decided to fire the head chef and the manager is because they sent out a correspondence to all Aramark employees, stating that you cannot and must not change the menu based on arbitrary decision-making processes locally,” Coleman said. “You have them [the menus] vetted through whatever institution and through head corp. They did not do that. The management on site made a decision to frame this soul food menu, so that is why Aramark decided to fire them.”
Also in attendance were Monroe Francis, the Associate Vice President for Student Affairs and Diversity Initiatives, and Leah Lattimore, the Director of the Center for Education and Multicultural Programming.
The panel asked students what they would want in a statement from Hamilton after sophomores Nia Harris and Kayla Eubanks said his apology was unclear.
“I want — the people who were fired — I want it be clarified who they were, what their positions were, that they were not people of color because that’s a big misconception,” Harris explained. “I want him to state that on this campus, he values Black students.”
Eubanks then interjected, saying that the statement was unclear as to who was at fault and what NYU is going to do moving forward.
“When I read the statement, it seemed pretty vague,” Eubanks said. “I want him to say that we at NYU acknowledge that this was wrong, we do not agree with it and we’re literally taking the side with the students. I want him to directly say that.”
Students’ suggestions for NYU’s statement included specifying that students never called for any firing and for the university to identify the employees’ professional titles, their responsibilities, and the exact reason why they were fired.
On Friday, The Daily Wire published a story with a headline that originally read, “Two Black Cooks Fired at NYU for Making ‘Racist’ Meal.” The story and headline have since been corrected, but misinformation have already spread across various social media platforms as a slew of news organizations and media professionals reposted the story.
“At no point in time in the meeting I had with your peers did they ever say — immediately after the incident happened — that ‘we want to have these people fired,’” Coleman said. “I will go on record, in my conversation with your peers as we were doing a follow-up meeting, an investigatory meeting, was that ever said. That was never said and I will even go further to say that it was actually explicitly requested that we protect and make certain that there would not be a course of action against the cooks and the frontline staff.”
NYU’s contract with Aramark will be reviewed in August. Coleman said NYU has had issues with Aramark recently, such as the ‘C’ health inspection grade in Lipton Hall, and would consider switching to a different company. However, switching companies would require a complete change to the dining hall system.
On this, NYU’s Incarceration to Education Coalition issued a statement regarding Aramark’s participation in private prisons, which have a history of institutional racism, and how NYU should “divest.”
“Moving forward, the only proper option is to divest from Aramark, and replace them with a company holding no investments in the mass incarceration of black and brown bodies,” the IEC said in their statement. “Anything short of this is simply unacceptable. If President Hamilton truly intends to deliver on NYU’s ‘longstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion,’ he must award the NYU dining contract to a company unaffiliated wit private prisons.”
In their #StayWoke Sunday correspondence to members, a weekly email that aims to summarizes recent news in the Black & Diasporic community, the Black Student Union (BSU) also released a statement regarding the Weinstein meal.
“To reiterate: watermelon, the fruit, is not the issue,” the statement read. “The issue is that someone went out of their way to purchase out-of-season watermelon to serve at a meal designed to celebrate Black students and their culture … NYU needs to begin asking the membership of the Black Student Union and the memberships of various Black student organizations how we would like to see NYU celebrate Black History Month as well as be open to adapting to the times as they change.”
Student groups across campus are making it clear that there is a larger conversation to be had regarding transparency.
“There was never a desire nor demand to terminate any employees expressed by any student or student organization,” read the GCOMMS statement, released Sunday. “We simply wanted the truth and an explanation. To demonize students for inquiring about the situation, instead of how the institutions at large responded, is unfathomable.”
The full statements from the Incarceration Education Coalition, Black Student Union, and the Governance Council of Minority and Marginalized Students are posted below.
University Spokesperson John Beckman did not immediately return request for comment.
From Matthew at the IEC:
“The BHM meal displays an unacceptable level of racial insensitivity by Aramark staff, and President Hamilton’s response is insufficient both in terms of recognizing NYU administration’s role in this situation, and explicitly supporting the students who brought awareness to this issue and thus incurred the harassment of racist online trolls. IEC believes that Aramark’s substantial investment in the racist, morally repugnant private prison industry should have prevented them from winning the NYU Dining contract in the first place — administration, and administration alone, bears responsibility for inviting a corporation with strong ties to institutional racism onto NYU’s campus.
Moving forward, the only proper option is to divest from Aramark, and replace them with a company holding no investments in the mass incarceration of black and brown bodies. Anything short of this is simply unacceptable. If President Hamilton truly intends to deliver on NYU’s “longstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion,” he must award the NYU dining contract to a company unaffiliated wit private prisons.”
Opheli Garcia Lawler contributed to this report.
