Largest School Lunch Boycott Starts Today in Connecticut

Heather Callaghan
Activist Post

Today, starts the first day of one of the largest, most viral student-led lunchtime boycotts. Farmington High School of Farmington, Connecticut organized the Facebook event to boycott the school lunches for November 3-7th. The peaceful consumer demonstration protests not only the incredibly dismal quality of the food, but also the harsh credit system that denies lunches when accounts are slightly overdrawn. Over 500 people have signed up to attend.

If there weren’t some photos to back up the complaints, the quality problem would sound outrageous enough for Charles Dickens to reject as fiction. Students have found mold, uncooked chicken, expired food, unidentifiable blobs, dead bugs and human hairs. They have described portion sizes for $3.50 lunches that amount to a couple of gulps. But to add insult to injury, students are not alerted when their accounts are running down. Instead, their lunch is taken and chucked into garbage cans right next to the register; right in front of their faces and peers. In one instance, a parent complained that her daughter who has Type 1 diabetes was forced to throw out her only meal – a yogurt. Another student had his lunch laid waste because he was short 50 cents.