A campaign launched by the St. Thomas dining services has left a bad taste for some Catholic students.

Meatless Mondays, an initiative started in 2003 by the Monday Campaigns, encourages participants to refrain from meat on those days and has proved controversial after seemingly contradicting the Catholic tradition of Lenten Fridays. St. Thomas joined the movement in 2015.

Discourse began when an infographic advertising Meatless Mondays was tweeted by the St. Thomas Student Affairs Twitter account in February. The ad contained the phrase “Why not Lenten Fridays?”, which referred to the Catholic practice of abstaining from meat in the 40 days before Easter. The ad was seen by some as pitting the two ideas against each other.

The tweet has since been removed.

“I think that Meatless Mondays is an excellent campaign, but we shouldn’t degrade and downplay Lenten Fridays,” first-year Martin Radosevic said. “It is a very strong Catholic tradition and we are a Catholic school.”

The original intent of Meatless Mondays was not as a replacement for Lenten Fridays. The idea comes from the Monday Campaigns, a company that works to increase world health. Other campaigns include Move it Monday, which promotes exercise, and Man Up Monday, which promotes sexual health.

“There’s many other schools in the country that do it,” View Assistant Director Angela Hasouris said. “We felt this program was a good opportunity to introduce people to some of the benefits of a plant based diet, and also it’s a more sustainable way to eat.”

The View has been practicing Meatless Mondays since 2015, but only at the World Eats station. The View always provides fish and vegetarian options for students during Lent and Ash Wednesday.

“Lenten Fridays is something that we’ve always provided and supported as a Catholic institution,” Hasouris said. “There was never any intention of Meatless Monday replacing Lenten Fridays. It was an educational piece that was misinterpreted.”

Solveig Rennan can be reached at renn6664@stthomas.edu