After months of ferment, students at Harvard University have voted to lift a ban on grapes in their dining halls.
The students voted, 1,694 to 1,472, to repeal the prohibition in a referendum held last week.
The ban on grapes at Harvard began in 1992, after a group of students asked dining-service officials to stop purchasing grapes from California and Chile, which produce most of the grapes eaten in the United States.
Grapes from Chile are often contaminated with pesticides, the students argued. Harvard shouldn’t buy California grapes, they added, because growers there have refused to sign contracts with the United Farm Workers union.
In an editorial on the day of the vote last week, The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper, urged students to uphold the ban on grapes because “there is no safe option” for acquiring them.
But the ban has always angered grape fans, along with those who don’t like politics on their dinner plates. Adam R. Kovacevich, a junior and a member of the group that pushed to repeal the ban, said before the vote that students should be able to choose what to eat. “If this loses, we won’t have that choice.”
The ban’s opponents found an ally in Ted Mayer, Harvard’s director of dining services. He pointed out that grapes were already part of several college-cafeteria staples. “We already served grape juice, grapes in raisin bran, and raisin cookies,” he said. “So why not table grapes?”
Harvard will begin serving Chilean grapes on December 14.
