A protest will take place at Scripps College on Tuesday, Feb. 4 at 12:10pm against the college’s dining hall catering company, Sodexo, which runs the college’s sole dining hall, Malott Commons. The gathering is organized by the Drop Sodexo movement at the California liberal arts college, which has campaigned for months—with another protest in March last year—to pressure the college administration to change the catering service provider. Additionally, a boycott by Scripps students also took place back in 2017, when students labelled Sodexo “neocolonial,” “racist” and “exploitative,” which resulted in protesters boycotting Malott for a single lunchtime meal.
Sodexo is a French multinational food services company that also runs catering services in prisons, drawing intense criticism from some students at Scripps as well as those from the other Claremont Colleges—which aside from Scripps, includes Pomona, Harvey Mudd, Claremont McKenna, and Pitzer Colleges—who often dine at Malott. Despite these accusations and criticisms, Sodexo has won many awards related to diversity, feminism and LGBT rights within its company.
A Facebook event, titled “The Final Push to Drop Sodexo,” created by Drop Sodexo, states that representatives from Sodexo will be on campus around the time of the protest, and asks attendees to “DEMAND that Scripps does not renew the contract,” calling for protesters to “pack the [Balch] auditorium.” As of the time of writing, over 220 students either stated on Facebook that they were interested in or going to the event.