Where's Their Beef? Vanderbilt Students Protest University's Relationship With Wendy's

NASHVILLE, TN — Vanderbilt students marched over the weekend, urging the university to cut ties with Wendy's until the fast food chain joins the Fair Food Campaign.

Organized by Nashville Fair Food, the march from campus to the Wendy's at West End and Natchez Trace was part of the "Boot The Braids" campaign, a nationwide campus effort to get colleges to end relationships and sponsorship agreements with Wendy's, one of the few major chains not to have joined the Fair Food Program.

The Fair Food Program is an effort that began with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. The CIW, which was founded in Immokalee, Fl. — the center of the Sunshine State's tomato growing industry, has been on the forefront of representing farmworkers and assisting the federal government in prosecuting and investigating worker abuses in the produce industry. Most of the largest chains have joined the Fair Food program, whereas Wendy's simply pulled out of the Florida tomato industry, which many people noticed when the chain made tomatoes a by-request topping for burgers and sandwiches last year.

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“We think that students are in the unique position to tell universities if they stand with these values they should not be in business with companies that violate those values on a daily basis,” Ania Szczesniewski, a Vanderbilt student, told WTVF.