PANTRY
number of people in his household, contact information and so on — logging his answers in a database.
With the questions out of the way, Morgan, a junior at Central Ohio Technical College, was given a checklist to guide him as he perused the storage cabinets in the room for canned and boxed goods, toiletries and other items.
The Cincinnati native became one of about 60 students on the shared campus to take advantage of Campus Corner, a pantry operated by the Office of Retention and the Office of Student Life.
The resource opened in late October, after many students surveyed in the spring were found to lack consistent access to food.
Forty-four percent of the 700 respondents, for example, said they either worry about being able to afford groceries or have skipped a meal for lack of money. More than half of those students said they face such struggles weekly.
The findings confirmed what Justin Khol, assistant director for student life, and Jamie White, retention coordinator, had suspected.
The two spent the summer making the resource a reality, finding a space on campus — the Warner Library and Student Center — and identifying an enthusiastic partner in the Food Pantry Network of Licking County, which delivers monthly shipments of food and hygiene products at no cost.
“We’ve got students in need, and we have students even struggling with homelessness,” Khol said. “Just having a meal that’s available to them or something to get them to the next meal, through the next week, has been huge.”
Campus Corner is exclusively for low-income students, many of whom don’t have the time or the transportation to get to a community food pantry. Eligible students can use the pantry 15 times a year, Khol said, with the goal being to provide them with four days of food per visit.
If students need help more often, White and Khol connect them with the community food pantry or other resources.
“For me, it was, ‘What can we do to support them personally so we give them the opportunity to thrive academically?’” White said. “The sense from students so far that we’ve heard has been: ‘This is great.’”
Gayheart, who as a student-life employee frequently works at the pantry, has shopped the cabinet shelves herself. She is financially independent, often struggling to afford meals.
“Any little thing helps,” the 18-year-old Bexley resident said. “It means a lot.”
The campus joins a growing list of universities that are addressing the hunger problem among college students.
The Promise House at Otterbein University, coordinated by the Center for Community Engagement, is open to all students regardless of circumstances. For two years, the service has offered a food pantry, school supplies, a cafe and educational workshops.
Last month, Ohio University was approved to accept federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits at Jefferson Marketplace, an on-campus grocery store.
Although Campus Corner organizers are still spreading the word about the resource in Newark, Chuck Moore, director of the Food Pantry Network of Licking County, said the campus service is already helping a population that might have been overlooked.
“We feel like maybe we’re hitting another sector that we weren’t doing an adequate job serving,” Moore said.“We know that the knowledge of it on campus is getting around and students are feeling more at ease to go in and utilize our services.”
Flyers advertising Campus Corner are posted throughout campus, and Khol regularly sends out newsletters reminding students about the resource, which this year will receive all campus donations to the annual Operation Feed drive coordinated among the two colleges and the food network.
In the past, those donations benefited other area pantries.
In addition, the proceeds from a second annual basketball game pitting staff against students (spectators donated $1 or a canned good) will benefit the pantry.
The support has been so strong that Khol said he canceled a few scheduled deliveries from the food network.
“I never imagined it’d be such a large outpouring,” he said.
The pantry — open for two hours on Monday evenings and Tuesday afternoons — is staffed by a student employee in either White’s or Khol’s office.
OSU-Newark junior Aminata Ndiaye, 22, who works in the retention office, said the reaction from students using the pantry has been heartwarming.
“You can see how much students need this help,” said Ndiaye, a Columbus resident majoring in psychology.
“It makes me more grateful for things I take for granted.”
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