People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals named Brandeis the runner-up in the Small U.S. Schools category of its Most Vegan-Friendly College Contest on Monday.

Brandeis came in second to Northwestern University after making it through the brackets against schools such as Brown University and Bennington College in this year's competition.

The contest is conducted by peta2, which describes itself as PETA's "youth division." According to the competition's website, winners of each round were determined by a combination of online voting, peta2's judgment of each school's vegan-friendliness, the schools' promotion efforts and feedback from individual students.

Voting was conducted via Facebook, where each school received as many votes as people who "liked" its link to the competition. For example, "Brandeis University for Most Vegan-Friendly College 2011" was "liked" over 800 times.

Before this year, Brandeis' best showing was making it to the final four in 2010.

Peta2's description of Brandeis cited vegan dining options like "vegan brownies, vegan spaghetti and meatballs, barbecue veggie riblets, and vegan beef tacos."

Peta2 found competitors to have similar options. Wesleyan University offers "barbecue seitan" and "tofu spinach lasagna," according to the contest's website, while Northwestern reportedly serves "tofu French toast" and has a "Meatless Monday program."

"Brandeis is extremely vegan-friendly," Zoe Novic '13, a vegan, said in an interview with the Justice. "It's really easy" to be vegan at Brandeis, said Novic, adding that there are "a lot of options."

However, Novic said there is room to improve. "If we are the most vegan-friendly school in the country, then that says something really bad about the rest of the schools."

Novic said that she did not vote in peta2's competition, citing "conflicting views" about Brandeis' vegan-friendliness in general, not only as compared to other colleges.

Kimi Van Wickle '14, who is also vegan, had a different take on the state of vegan dining on campus, calling peta2's assessment of Brandeis "ridiculous" and "overstated" in an interview with the Justice.

While "there are definitely vegan options at Brandeis," they are limited and in many cases "unhealthy," said Van Wickle. Van Wickle said she was able to find many vegan options in the Provisions on Demand market, but was frustrated with the lack of organic food and the fact that some foods were meal-approved while their vegan counterparts were not.

Van Wickle said she did not vote for Brandeis for most vegan-friendly college. "By voting and saying Brandeis is really vegan, I think you can encourage Brandeis to make more vegan choices, but on the other hand it just isn't true," said Van Wickle, adding that "unless you're vegan, you're not qualified to vote for it."

Other students agreed that the competition depends too much on non-vegan input.

"It's just how many people you can get to like [the link]," said Joe Babeu '15. Babeu said that he abstained from voting in the earlier rounds because he felt that he didn't know enough about the issue. However, said Babeu, he voted in the fourth round because "It [was] really getting down to the wire." Babeu said he wanted to support Brandeis "even if I don't really know if we're vegan-friendly or not."

According to Student Union President Herbie Rosen '12, who helped to promote the competition in response to a request from Dining Services, results from the Student Union PULSE survey indicated that students were not satisfied with the overall quality of vegan dining on campus.

"I do applaud Dining Services for getting Brandeis involved in [the contest], but I'd love to actually see us being vegan-friendly," said Rosen in an interview with the Justice.

While Rosen acknowledged that there are vegan options at Brandeis, he said that Brandeis needs to "step it up a lot more."