Editor’s Note: Student Union’s weekly columns are a joint effort of the region’s high schools, the Bangor Daily News and Acadia Hospital. This week’s column was written by a John Bapst Memorial High School student. The adviser is Lynn Manion.

Peter Schwartzman, an assistant professor of environmental studies at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., became a vegetarian last year. If Peter were a football player, he would play on the line. Peter does not look like a vegetarian.

Not at all the sort of vegetarian you could pick easily out of a crowd, Peter struggled at first to admit publicly his own nature. He, as a man who looks like lumberjacks do, felt an obligation not to be anyone but a guy with a meat freezer at his disposal.

At each of Knox’s home basketball games, Peter can be found seated behind the scorer’s table, berating the referees. Well over 6 feet tall, and immediately intimidating, he certainly commands a presence. He played collegiate basketball and has always been a part, to some extent, of the locker room culture. Peter was apprehensive once he became a vegetarian to acknowledge this new aspect of his life. His friends weren’t all fellow science professors.

He feared that those of his friends who put more stock in his imposing stature would not understand his redefintion. But Peter’s mind certainly had been made up. In his research into the topic, he already had encountered facts far too troubling, and did not feel he could continue putting such trust and stock in the companies that mass-produce meat. “From a health perspective, it’s questionable,” Peter now says of eating meat.

For the few years before he made his decision, Peter had been aware of the risks associated with eating meat. It wasn’t a question of morality for Peter, but things had been weighing on him since he read “Fast Food Nation” by Eric Schlosser, an expose in the vein of Upton Sinclair. The book revealed to Peter certain aspects of meat production and sale that piqued his interest in vegetarianism.

Peter and his family now belong to an organic local foods cooperative through which once a month they order a variety of foods produced free of pesticides and chemicals in general. The majority of the food his family consumes now is organic. Through his vegetarianism, and the research that led to it, Peter has learned which vegetables not farmed organically ought most to be avoided. For instance, while broccoli does not typically carry a great deal of pesticide, spinach and green peppers do. Pesticides, as it happens, are not generally water-soluble.

Peter’s vegetarianism and standing in an organic foods cooperative have less to do with moral outrage than a sensitive regard for his own health. Ultimately, Peter, convinced by the facts his research turned up, faced only the issue of admitting his own vegetarianism. Peter felt “as if I’m giving away my masculinity, by asserting my vegetarianism.”

One incident particularly is a sharp reminder for Peter of the tough adjustment. Not long after he thought he had finally decided on becoming a vegetarian, Peter was waiting in line at Subway, intending to order a vegetarian sub. But when his turn came to order, Peter, uncomfortable when faced with the potential judgment of the sandwich artist, blanched and ordered a meatball sub. “You really have to out yourself,” Peter says.

Schools participating in Student Union are Hampden Academy, Brewer High School, John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor, Old Town High School, Mount Desert Island Regional High School, Stearns High School in Millinocket, Nokomis Regional High School in Newport, Hermon High School, and Schenck High School in East Millinocket.