Colleges stock pantries for food insecure students

NEW HAVEN — Surrounded by pantry and toiletry basics such as bread, milk, instant noodles, cereal, paper towels and shampoo, Fejiro Onakpoma jumped in the air and clicked his heels together.

“They’ve got everything!” he exclaimed.

Onakpoma, a senior at Southern Connecticut State University, made his first visit to a campus food pantry to alleviate some financial pressure days before the school takes a Thanksgiving recess.

“Grocery shopping is expensive when you need to buy stuff every week,” he said.

Onakpoma and roommate Bernardo Mbaya, student athletes who live off campus, traveled to the pantry with reusable bags, signing an agreement that they would only take what is reasonable.

“It takes a big load off of bills,” said Mbaya, who was visiting the pantry for his second time.

According to a spokesman for the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system — which represents 12 community colleges and four public universities — all 16 of the system’s schools have on-campus food pantries.

In a 2019 CSCU survey, more than 60 percent of 434 SCSU students surveyed said they often worry or sometimes worry their supply of food will run out before they receive enough money to buy more. Across the CSCU system, 54.5 percent of 3,096 students said the same. According to the same survey, 45.5 percent of students said they did not know if their institution offered any form of food assistance.

Previously, a mobile food pantry based in Milford visited SCSU’s campus twice per month. This year, owing in part to a university fundraising haul of more than $500,000 last spring, officials have been able to stock a pantry for use six days a week since Oct. 28.

“There’s no question the need has been exacerbated by the pandemic,” said SCSU Dean of Student Affairs Jules Tetreault.

Tetreault said the university is looking to turn the wing of the campus building where the pantry is located into a center for wraparound services.

According to information from the university’s development office, 80 percent of students at SCSU work jobs while attending school. Tetreault said that, at a university that strives to be an “access institution,” food insecurity and shelter insecurity are not uncommon. Administrators believe a center dedicated to helping students with needs such as applying for food assistance benefits or connecting them with housing supports can have an overall positive impact on their academic and personal success.

“It’s a broader issue than just food,” he said.

SCSU sophomore Abby Przybylowicz works at her school’s pantry under the federal work study program. She said she witnesses firsthand how much the pantry can make a difference.

“It’s a great opportunity we have this year,” she said. “All college campuses deal with food insecurity.”

National experts agree that food and other needs insecurity on college campuses is startlingly common.

Eddy Conroy, associate director of research communications for the Philadelphia-based Hope Center for College, Community and Justice — which researches issues around student needs in higher education — said about 40 percent to 50 percent of students have reported some form of basic needs insecurity consistently for the five years that the Hope Center has conducted surveys. A survey published this spring found 39 percent of surveyed students reported being food insecure at some point in the last year.

“Food pantries have never solved hunger, they are Band-Aid solutions,” he said. “They’re admirable, but we see food pantries as a first step, not an end goal.”

However, benefit hubs and wraparound service centers such as the one SCSU is building are one of the “promising practices” Hope Center researchers have identified.

“We see a correlation between food insecurity and lower (grade point averages),” Conroy said. Although a causal relationship has not been established between the two, he said there is a large base of research on the issue of hunger in grade school students and performance linking needs insecurity to poorer academic outcomes. “This doesn’t change because you’re over the age of 18. There’s a lot of promising initial evidence to show if you support students’ basic needs, they’ll be able to focus on being a student.”

Hope Center research has also found basic needs insecurity disproportionately affects students of marginalized identities; an electronic survey administered between April 20 and May 15 this year found a 19 percentage point gap in needs insecurity between Black and white students.

Duncan Harris, CEO of Capital Community College in Hartford, was part of a team that implemented a food pantry at Manchester Community College while he was dean of students in partnership with Foodshare, the regional food bank that serves Hartford and Tolland counties. When he arrived at Capital as CEO in 2018, he implemented a similar program in partnership with Foodshare, for which he is a board member as a higher education partner.

“One of the things we recognized a long time ago is there are a number of factors contributing to students’ inability to complete (their program of study) that might be non-cognitive in nature, and food insecurity is one of them,” he said. “The absurdity of thinking someone will master physics or chemistry if they haven’t eaten just doesn’t make sense.”

Harris said usage of Capital’s food bank is down this semester, but officials believe it is because 85 percent of courses are offered online during the pandemic and not because there is any less of a need.

“Foodshare has experienced unprecedented need. They operate out of Rentschler Field now and it’s common to see lines down Silver Lane just waiting to access food and support,” he said.