Approximately 3,600 Berkeley undergraduate students participate in CalGreeks, the UC Berkeley community of over 60 fraternities and sororities. As almost 12 percent of Berkeley undergraduates participate in Greek life, the fraternities and sororities are a significant yet previously understudied segment of the campus food system. Determining the inclusivity and equitability of the UC Berkeley Greek Community’s food system is a challenge.

Learning Through Our Food is an oral history project created to gain a greater understanding of food literacy in its most basic form: that is, how individuals relate to food through their personal history. It highlights the narratives of students who are involved in campus organizations outside of the existing food experiential education spaces and their experiences associated with food.

The Berkeley Student Cooperative is an independent nonprofit housing cooperative that provides room and board to approximately 1230 UC Berkeley students. They are known for their affordability, affability, and accessibility. Through our research, we found that food plays a central role to the living experience of a co-op. It acts as a source of togetherness, of teamwork, and of diplomacy.

Student groups play an important role within the food system on campus and represent collective student action within that system. The data in this infographic are based on responses to a Berkeley Food Institute survey of individuals involved in food-related student groups, conducted in spring 2017. The responses have been compared to the UC Berkeley demographics data to see how closely food-related student group members represent the campus-wide population.