Rowdy All Over Again
Last night was my last class in my ethics class for a month. Kim and I are headed off on Monday to Egypt and Jordan for a few weeks. Normally I try to not miss more than two weeks when I teach, but this time I will miss three weeks, but I get a pass on the last week since it is the official school Spring Break. I have been sure to give the class a proper send-off and a topic to focus their attention while I am away. The topic is ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) policies that are becoming prevalent in the corporate boardroom in guiding overall corporate policy. Naturally, this is not without a great deal of controversy in our bifurcated world. Some people view this issue as going too far beyond business and wandering into political and social issue which have no place in business policy. The pro-ESG crowd feels strongly that dealing with environmental, social and governance issues is central to the business models that will be most effective and productive (both in bottom-line and general societal form). Their assignment for those two weeks will be to engage in a collective online discussion forum designed to allow them to generate pro and con views on a central proposition about ESG and its business orientation, as well as to write an essay on ESG oriented to one of three things (or a combination thereof). Those three are two assigned movies, Hidden Figures and Erin Brockovich, the ongoing fight between Disney and Ron DeSantis in Florida over the “Don’t Say Gay” legislation, and on the issue of factory farming. While I feel that is enough substance to keep everyone busy (especially me, reading all those forums and essays on my way home), I wanted something strong to kick it off. Enter Rowdy.
Rowdy Keelor, you may recall from my post about six months ago, works for the Factory Farming Awareness Coalition (FFAC), who go out an speak to groups about the impact that factory farming is having on our world. Rowdy spoke in my ethics class last semester and really impressed me. What impressed me most was that the arguments against factory farming are so compelling and that the story hangs together so well in a world where many of us have never even heard about the issue much less think about it daily. That is all changed for me now and I was anxious to have Rowdy return this semester to speak to my class again. He spends time talking to high school students and college students, so speaking to graduate business students is a little bit different in terms of the sophistication of the audience and the natural tendency to worry more about business impact than about little grinning piglets. Rowdy says that makes the session all the more interesting to him. Such is the conviction of someone who has been on this soapbox for seven years.
Like last time, I started by meeting Rowdy for dinner at the same place we ate last year, which is a conveniently located ramen noodle shop near campus. Once again I ordered vegetable gyoza for dinner so as to honor the notion that plant-based food is both sufficient and pleasant to sustain ourselves and help save the planet. We updated one another about our travels and what-not over the past half year. Last time I was on my way to Spain and Portugal for a motorcycle trip and this year I’m heading to the Middle East. I think Rowdy finds that all a bit more exotic than he is used to, but it made for interesting dinner conversation anyway. I told him that in the past six months I have probably preached the factory farming story to a dozen small gatherings because I find the facts so interesting and compelling to people. I am not sure I have become a vegan just yet, but I am certainly more aware than I was before about the impact of all of this.
Rowdy’s objective in his teaching is to push people to a level of awareness to change their behavior at the grass-roots level and to drive change from the bottom up. My objective in the class is to get my students to see the importance of the factory farming issue on the entire ESG issue and how it might impact business going forward. This is not done to weaponize their thinking against factory farming, but rather to prepare them for what I perceive is the inevitability of the coming changes in society and business that are necessitated by the negative impacts from our existing food production complex. There is nothing more fundamental to human existence than food, other than, perhaps, clean air and water. The interesting thing is that one of the most compelling problems created by factory farming is that it severely pollutes our clean air and water while providing a relatively inefficient and antiquated food delivery system that literally feeds our antiquated tastes rather than pushing a changing diet that is more sustainable and consistent with the needs of an eight billion person world.
I listened carefully again to Rowdy’s lecture and was equally impressed by his easy and non-confrontational style of presentation. I saw hints of his emphasis on teaching younger students like when he joked about pie charts and bar charts. Those are basic tools to business school students and I sense the joke was more lost on them than it might be on a younger audience. But other than that, Rowdy knew how to address the graduate business crowd as well as anyone could with a room full of diverse people who serious about driving money-making careers forward and thus reflect the fullest diverse spectrum of political and social views. I find that diversity a constant challenge, but Rowdy took it in stride. He even properly handled my one student who has a behavioral issue due to being on the spectrum and thus being too outspoken at times. It was an impressive performance that went about 90 minutes. The engagement was wide-ranging (not just coming form the left-leaning side of the classroom) and even included two students who stayed after class to sign up for the FFAC Advocacy Program that Rowdy touted at the end of the session. I can tell when the class has particularly enjoyed a session and when they have not, and this session energized them. That’s not to say they are all turning vegan tomorrow or that they necessarily agree with everything that Rowdy told them about factory farming, but they did seem to agree that they now knew a lot more about the issue than they had. I also suspect that they would agree that that knowledge will be useful to them as they organize their business careers.
After driving Rowdy back to his car, I took note that I was driving a Tesla, which is a full-on EV and which many people think is actually less ecologically efficient than it is touted to be. Its an expensive car that makes an expensive statement that I want to help the world, whether I am doing it or not. Rowdy, on the other hand got into his small hybrid vehicle that both cost a lot less and, I suspect, is probably far more energy efficient taken in a holistic way. That sort of sums up the difference between Rowdy and me. I want to do it and he does it.
As I started my drive home I noted that I was unusually hungry. I never eat at night and I never stop for food on my way home from class at 9pm, but I was feeling particularly hungry. I guess that vegetable gyoza wasn’t lasting as long as I needed it to and my body was crying for something. I decided to stop and get some French Fries at McDonalds. When I ordered the woman thought I wanted the two cheeseburger meal and I just let that stand, thinking that I could give Betty the cheeseburgers for breakfast. When the bag hit the front seat, the smell of the cheese burgers overwhelmed me and I quickly dispatched one of them to quell the rumbling in my stomach. The good news was that I pretty much ignored the fries and I did leave the other cheeseburger for Betty. But as I drove home, thinking about Rowdy’s talk and about my reinforced interest in the factory farming issue, I found myself feeling pretty guilty that Rowdy was living his beliefs and I was just going about my somewhat same old lifestyle…wanting to do it, but having my issues with making the Rowdy program work at ground level. I promise to do better, and that’s all any of us can do.