There is certainly a need for Halal food at BHSECQ, so why doesn’t the cafeteria offer it?
Located in Queens, one of the most ethnically diverse places in the world, with a racially diverse student body, there are bound to be differing dietary needs for students attending the school. The cafeteria menu, however, does not reflect that. For a student keeping Halal, the Bard Queens cafeteria is not always an option for lunch. With 61% of students at BHSECQ qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch, not having the proper options is a problem.
According to Donia Aboudaka, president of Bard’s Muslim Student Alliance, “getting Halal food in the BHSEC cafeteria is so important because it is an indication that we have an administration that cares about the school’s Muslim population and is guaranteeing they are represented in every way possible.” With BHSECQ’s Muslim population being so large, Principal Laura Hymson, previous principal Valerie Thompson and multiple generations of SLT representatives have sought to tackle this issue.
Halal food contains only ingredients that are permitted by the Islamic faith. Restrictions include pork and alcohol, and all meat is required to be slaughtered in a manner called dhabiha. This means cutting through the jugular vein, carotid artery, and windpipe to drain all of the blood from the animal, because consumption of blood is considered Haram, or forbidden by Islamic law. Halal food also cannot come into contact with non-halal food. Herein lies the biggest challenge to making these options available in Bard’s lunchroom. For months, BHSEC administration tried to work out a way to get a separate refridgerator for the Halal food, which was a slow-moving process that wasn’t leading to any real results.
On Thursday, December 5, however, Principal Hymson took the next step towards this goal. She met with superintendent Hoa Tu and discussed the reality of making all the food served in the cafeteria Halal, rather than attempting to undertake the inefficient process of keeping it in a separate refrigerator from the non-Halal.
To make this a reality, an Imam, an Islamic priest who leads mosque prayers, will visit the school to educate and train the current cafeteria staff on what it means to keep Halal and the sanitary measures that will need to be taken. After this training takes place, the cafeteria staff will do a deep cleaning of “every inch of the kitchen and the serving space,” that will also be approved by the Imam, according to Hymson. This training and cleaning will have to happen on a day when the cafeteria staff is working, but Bard students don’t need meals: “ideally the January regents days.”
Once all this is complete, the “new” Halal menu will be almost identical to the menu now. “The truth is, most students might not feel the difference in the sense that you’ll be eating similar menu items that you’ve always seen,” Hymson says. The real difference, of course, is that the Muslim population at the school will be able to truly take advantage of free school lunch. As Aboudaka puts it, “This is a huge step for our school, because BHSEC’s Muslim students no longer have to choose between sacrificing their beliefs and staying hungry.”
At present, Bard Queens is on a list of roughly ten schools waiting for the DOE’s training, but Hymson says that having Halal food “by the beginning of the spring semester is the goal.”
It was Professor Jennifer Kaplan’s advisory students, Donia Aboudaka, Victoria Alsahley, Shaza Mohemed, and Emme Aviles, however, that wrote emails to superintendent Hoa Tu, who responded almost immediately and reached out to meet with Principal Hymson. As Hymson puts it, “they really do listen when it’s individual students saying things like ‘right now I can’t eat any food in my cafeteria.’” Remember this if any of you feel like Bard doesn’t support your individual needs: advocating for your rights as a student will never go unnoticed.