Julia Eagles ’06 and I are sitting in her Veggie Co-op triple, in the midst of Bob Marley and Miles Davis posters,. I am dressed in Gap jeans and a Banana Republic shirt. It’s a cute place, but then, I’m in no situation to complain, since the gracious Veggie just saved me from another sad dinner at Café Mac, where currently the toaster is broken.
 

So, Julia. I know you’re into Environmental Ac— er, E-Funk. What are your current plans for the year?

We’re focusing on environmental sustainability this year and supporting the Environmental Studies department. We’d like to start working closer with the Mac Greens and MPIRG, trying to get more students involved. There’s also a new manager for Bon Appetit at Café Mac, who wants to set up a committee to look at organic food use and waste issues. We’d really like to support the Environmental Studies major.
 

Are you an ES major?

Yeah— well I haven’t declared. Except if I declare it in the Mac Weekly I guess I have.
 

So what is the Talloires Declaration? [Here I pretend to know what we’re talking about.]

It’s just about providing environmental sustainability on campus. It’s part of a national movement to hold campuses accountable to their pledges and ideals of environmental protection. They’re setting up a director of environmental affairs to look at our policy issues. It also has to do with Project Pericles, which is headed up by Karen Johnson in the Community Service Office. It’s all on the CSO website if you really want to read it all.
 

I hear you think coalition building is important. [Again, pretending to know what we’re talking about.]

I’m all about student empowerment and effective organizing for whatever people are working on. I think Mac might be lacking in letting people feel like we can get things done. Learning to organize and bringing faculty, staff and students together is important. Especially people who wouldn’t normally be brought together. It’s about building a movement.
 

So why’d you change the name?

Environmentalism has a reputation of taking itself too seriously. We want it to be about reaching out to people in a fun, creative way.
 

Have you thought about working with other colleges?

Yeah, it’s good to think oustide of the Mac bubble. We want to be a part of larger movements, definitely. MPIRG works well with other campuses and larger campaigns; E-Funk is more on a Mac policy/administration level. We’ve worked with the U on a paper campaign.
 

This is all making me feel very uninformed. Let’s talking about something I know even less about. How do you like living at the Veggie?

I like the idea of community and being intimate with what you’re eating. [I knew there was something dirty about the Co-op.] Community is key to social change. Quote that! It encourages depending on each other and sharing with each other. Sharing. Lots of sharing. We’re conscious of and apply the values we have about food choices—buying local, organic—as a community. It’s important to me to be deliberate about food choices. As a consumer you have a lot of power in what you eat.
 

I know some people are curious as to what you thought of the squirt-gun-assassination e-mail debate [when many a-mails were sent to the entire first-year class] last year. And by some people, I mean me.

[Groans] It was a fun idea. It got a bit out of hand. I was a little uncomfortable for a while, but it turned out fun. I don’t think people minded deleting a lot of e-mails. It’s good clean fun, student organized, good community.
 

I knew you’d be able to tie that to community.

I heard it used to be every J-term and the administration stopped it because it got out of hand. But I think it’s fun. So don’t stop it. We needed to mix stuff up. Like the clothing optional primal scream. Unconventional. Think outside the box.