For over 50 years, the students, faculty, staff, and community of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo have enjoyed the BRAE BBQ hosted by the Agricultural Engineering Society every Thursday during the academic year. Our barbeque started as a way for students within the Agricultural Engineering major to share a meal and grow closer together. Over the last few decades, the activity blossomed into an event attended by numerous students from all majors, faculty and staff from all corners of campus, and even attracting alumni, community members, and the contracted workers improving our facilities.

Offering a juicy burger with rudimentary toppings and sides places an emphasis on the community experience, for there are no Michelin chefs hailing from the BRAE department, but there is a multitude of smiles, laughs, and stories being thrown around. We have long been recognized and supported by our campus administration, but recently we have been fighting to keep our event running. From harsher regulations on food brands we can use, to increased requirements for event approval. We have been able to overcome these obstacles so far; however, now we have been given a firm end to our decades long tradition.

At the end of this year, Cal Poly will be bringing in a new company to run their Campus Dining facilities. This new company does not want to respect our tradition and seeks to limit us to just one barbeque per quarter. The possible justifications for shutting us down are three-fold: the consistent fundraising takes revenue away from Campus Dining facilities; it would be unfair for us to continue operating when other clubs would not receive the same treatment; food safety concerns exist.

All three of these can be refuted quite logically, the club actually does not make very much (if any) money on this event as we strive to keep our prices low despite inflation of supplies, our purpose is not to raise money but to provide a service for the community. No other club on campus holds a weekly barbeque open to everyone, no other club has a tradition lasting a half-century, and no other club has worked so transparently and diligently to appease all supervising entities. Therefore our event should be allowed to continue as a "grandfathered" event, we've flipping burgers since before you lost your two front teeth. Finally, our barbeque coordinators and volunteers all undergo California state food safety training and the BRAE department has put thousands of dollars into creating food-safe spaces for use to store, prepare, and serve lunches.

Please consider signing this petition to save our beloved event and to remind Cal Poly administration that the nonprofit organization exists to serve the campus community. 

Your signature is more than enough, please do not contribute monetarily we'd rather you send this petition on to someone else!