By his account, Friday, Sept. 15, was the tenth day of Aaron Akaberi’s hunger strike.
His refusal to eat, he has said, is in protest of the mandatory meal plan he is forced to take part in because he’s a resident living on the Binghamton University campus. The University’s housing license dictates that any student living in one of BU’s five on-campus residential communities must purchase a plan from Sodexho, BU’s dining-services provider.
Akaberi, a sophomore pursuing Arabic, philosophy and international studies at BU, says he has subsisted on nothing but water and one multivitamin per day since he started the hunger strike, and has dropped 14.6 lbs, going from 143.6 lbs to 129.0 lbs.
And while Akaberi describes his strike as “a grass roots movement,” and his Facebook.com group, “No more free lunch for Sodexho,” has accumulated over 160 members, his decision to go on a hunger strike came after lengthy discussions with Sodexho over his particular dietary requests.
Akaberi first contacted Sodexho on Aug. 10 to inform them of his intention to adhere to the Rastafarian diet, Ital. He said that he began considering joining the Rastafarian movement over the summer.
There are varying degrees of adherence to the guidelines of the diet, but his requests pertained to a strict interpretation: it excludes any metal cookware, meat and non-organic produce.
BU spokeswoman Gail Glover was able to recount the steps Sodexho has taken in dealing with Akaberi’s hunger strike because he signed a waiver of federal educational privacy laws Thursday, the same day he was featured in a story in the Press & Sun-Bulletin.
The proposal, Glover said, included provisions for “thrice-weekly shopping trips by the dietitian to procure the freshest organic items available,” as well as “adherence to proper Ital cooking standards per the student’s requests.”
According to a press release issued by Sodexho — and disseminated by Glover — dietitians worked “tirelessly” to create a proposal that met his requests.
“As of today, Sodexho has never been unable to meet any dietary needs,” she said — essentially, the food provider has been able to meet every special request students have had, medical, religious or otherwise.
Another concern for Akaberi was what he called the “flexibility to inform, educate, and mold” that Sodexho required of him in developing the diet. (See the accompanying chart for a closer look at Akaberi’s allegations and Sodexho’s responses.)
In the end, Akaberi was skeptical of the plan and ultimately rejected it. So on the morning of Wednesday, Sept. 6, he stopped eating.
“It seemed to me they were doing the same thing they do for parent’s weekend, where they roll out the red carpet,” he said. “It felt like a fa√É.√ßade.” Since then, Akaberi has been trying to gain publicity for his cause, first with a group on Facebook and then through an interview with WHRW, the campus radio station.
Although his group’s Facebook page lists five “griefs” with Sodexho’s meal plan policy, nowhere does he mention his personal requests to Sodexho concerning his Ital diet.
That’s one reason Glover and the University believe that while Akaberi’s resistance to a meal plan was originally rooted in religion, “it has since moved on to other issues.”
Akaberi, who lived on campus in Mountainview College last semester as a transfer student (and he said that he only used half of the meal plan during the whole semester), is free to move off campus or to the on-campus apartments in Susquehanna and Hillside communities. There, he would not have to purchase a meal plan.
And while Glover pointed out that there are still vacancies in these communities, Akaberi said he is unwilling to move.
“This is where my home is,” he said. “It would be antithetical to my Rasta principles to move elsewhere.”
Akaberi was also a candidate for a position in Mountainview’s student government, but lost his election on Tuesday. The hunger strike, however, will continue “indefinitely,” or until Sodexho exempts him from the meal plan — a course of action that Glover ruled out, citing the school’s “involuntary withdrawal policy.”
The policy, which gives administrators authority to withdraw a student from the University “based on the recommendation of the medical director of the University Health Service or the director of the University Counseling Center without academic penalty,” will be applied to Akaberi if such a recommendation is made. He would be removed from classes and University housing.
But Akaberi maintained that this “implicit threat” was infringing on his freedom of speech, which he has chosen to exercise through a hunger strike.
On Sept. 12, Akaberi received a memo from Lloyd M. Howe, BU’s dean of students. “I am concerned about your course of action and the adverse affects that this could have upon your health,” wrote Howe. “Therefore, you must meet with Dr. Michael Leonard … so that you can be medically evaluated and advised.”
Akaberi’s appointment was Thursday morning. It was unclear what kind of evaluation Leonard may have made, but as of Thursday no action had been taken against the student.
Akaberi, meanwhile, claims the University violated his privacy when it set up an appointment with the doctor.
According to a June 2004 article published in Slate magazine, “How long can you go without food: Hunger Strikes 101,” the limit for an average individual is 60 days, but the body begins to suffer after less than a week.
“Fasting becomes dangerous after just three to five days, at which point the body begins breaking down fat in order to produce energy,” the article reads.
But the real turning point comes after the third week, or whenever more than 18 percent of the starting weight has been lost: “The body tries to compensate by slowing down its metabolism, entering ‘starvation mode.’ Still, once fat stores are entirely depleted, the body has no choice but to mine the muscles and vital organs for energy. The striker simply wastes away as his body, quite literally, consumes itself.”