The Frank Bailey Prize
Presented to Jillian Falchi
By President Stephen C. Ainlay
May 8, 2010
The recipient of the Frank Bailey Prize is selected by the faculty and the prize is awarded annually to the senior deemed to have rendered the greatest service to the College in any field.
The contributions of this year’s Bailey Prize recipient have helped earn Union a spot on the Princeton Review’s list of the nation’s “Greenest Colleges.” A resident member of Ozone House, our Bailey Prize winner has made consistent, substantial, and important contributions to making our campus and the world more sustainable.
Our Bailey recipient has been a cornerstone of Union’s highly successful Ozone Café. She has pushed the Dining Services Subcommittee to become one of our sustainability committee’s most effective vehicles for positive change. Initiatives like Tray-less Tuesdays, U-Sustain mugs, the 03 Marketplace in Reamer, and West College composting, all owe to the leadership of our Bailey Prize recipient. She has been an educator, sharing articles related to food sustainability and heightening the community’s awareness in so many ways.
The awardee of a Presidential Green Grant, our Bailey Prize recipient launched a transformative program, the Campus Kitchens Project. This program imaginatively combines a concern for the environment, a commitment to minimizing the waste of food, and a concern for social justice. Through Campus Kitchens, surplus and soon-to-expire food is transformed into life maintaining sustenance for the poor and homeless. Through Campus Kitchens, our Bailey Prize winner, her fellow student volunteers, and Union Dining Services have literally saved lives.
As faculty members noted in their letter nominating this year’s Bailey Prize recipient, through her activism she has done so much to foster productive interaction among faculty, students, and staff. They go on to note that it is far from coincidental that she was able to do this around food as “breaking bread lowers barriers and offers a communal experience.”
It is in recognition of her efforts to change our community for the better, to affect change in the way we live our lives, to offer help to those who need it, and to lower barriers that can sometimes separate us that we present Jillian Falchi with the Bailey Prize.