Until they eat with Bernie, they won’t eat at all.

Eleven members of a student-protest group urging UF to make its investments transparent dug into a vegetarian meal they said could be their last of the semester outside Tigert Hall on Wednesday.

The students said they plan to strike, or starve, until UF President Bernie Machen agrees to meet with them over lunch to discuss socially responsible investment plans for UF’s $1.2 billion endowment. The meal Wednesday - steamed cabbage, fried plantains, rice and beans, and tempeh curry - was eaten after an 11 a.m. news conference outside Tigert, the building that houses Machen’s office.

Members of the protest group, Students for a Democratic Society, have been pushing for disclosure of UF’s investments for nearly a year. The group wants to create a committee of students and faculty to advise the Board of Trustees, UF’s highest governing body, on socially responsible investing of UF’s endowments.

The group’s aim is a challenge to UF’s current endowment policy, which leaves investment decisions up to UF’s Investment Corporation, a non-profit organization exempt from open public-record requirements.

In November, Machen responded to a few of the protesters in a letter, writing that he could not endorse the group’s suggestions because he believes in the trustees’ current policies.