By Colin M. Prenger ’11
THE ROUNDUP

“Food: From Farm to Table” is this year’s Summit on Human Dignity theme and is expected to raise awareness and consciousness for the student body with regards to sustainable food intake and production.

To be more specific, the intake portion of the Summit concerns nutrition and what foods are good and bad for us. Production is about where food comes from, and how it gets to our table in addition to who has access to food.

All of this is contained in the Summit 2011 Mission Statement, which presents the issues that will be focused on during summit week: production, distribution, nutrition and labor.

An excerpt from the Mission Statement reads, “In light of the complexities of the local and global food markets and the questions they elicit, students will be invited to consider five primary questions: What are we eating? Where does it come from? What makes food nutritionally good? Who has access to it? And finally; what will food mean for our community?”

According to Assistant Principal for Ministry Mrs. Kim Baldwin, this year’s Summit will have a more narrow focus compared to past Summits  that students said they were too broad or too global.

In response to this, the planning committee decided to keep the topic as local as possible because it is more relevant to students.

“Globalization last year produced some great discussion, but food is a much more tangible and relatable concept for the student body,” said Austin Tymins ’13.

Even though the two main speakers for the Summit are from other states, they will still discuss issues that pertain to the local community here in Arizona while “workshop day is primarily going to be all local people,” Mrs. Baldwin said.

Traditionally, the intention of the Summit is to introduce an outward perspective on global issues through a lens of human dignity rather than living in our own world.

“One thing I don’t want to be lost in this year’s Summit, is that it’s not only about our own health and nutrition, but about food and security,” Mrs. Baldwin said about the fact that even though the topic is local, it still pertains to much more than the student community.

Another aspect of the topic this year is that the Summit closes on Ash Wednesday, which is when Brophy kicks off the Lenten Drive.

According to Mrs. Baldwin, this is where students can take the local perspective of the Summit and apply it to larger, more global issues.

What is Brophy’s Summit on Human Dignity?

According to Brophy’s Office of Faith and Justice:

Summits like this are frequent occurrences at universities and colleges around the world; often times the goal of these summits is to bring influential voices together to effect change in policy, procedure and the world in which we live.

These summits serve as an immersion experience through which students are asked to reflect on how their faith calls them to respond to a complicated world. While we realize the majority of our students are not yet of voting age, we nonetheless recognize their capacity for change as young people who are in formation.

And so, it is Brophy’s hope that our annual summit might contribute to the formation of our students such that they become young men of conscience and conviction, willing to stand up against a culture that too often values expediency and efficiency at the expense of human dignity.

Ultimately, Brophy hopes to graduate young men who will one day participate in summits at colleges and universities, young men who will have voices that can positively influence real change in policy, procedure and the world in which we live.