National Post

Post-secondary students starving reports met with skepticism.

- Marni Soupcoff

Of all the bad- news story t hemes t hat r egularly make the Canadian media rounds, the one about hungry post- secondary students converging on campus food banks — versions of which have appeared in Macleans, the Toronto Star, and on CBC and vice.com, over the past couple years — always leaves me skeptical and frustrated.

Just this month, the students at Ryerson University in Toronto voted to add a $ 2.50 tuition levy that will go directly to the school’s food bank. Claire Davis, the coordinato­r of the food bank, told CBC that Ryerson students are “skipping meals, passing out in the class. Really serious things that people who are 18 to 21 shouldn’t have to deal with.” And I thought to myself, there’s something very wrong with this picture.

I know that any way you look at it, complainin­g about voluntary charitable schemes designed to help combat hunger is going to sound peevish and bad- tempered. So, before you email me about my elitist hard- heartednes­s, please understand that I get it. I know this column will be read by some as a Marie Antoinette- like “let them eat ramen noodles” display of disregard for student suffering.

But I’m going to say it anyway. I think the notion of student hunger in Canada is overblown.

Part of the problem is people have begun to use the terms “hunger” and “food insecurity” almost interchang­eably even though they mean very different things.

The Oxford dictionary defines hunger as, “A feeling of discomfort or weakness caused by lack of food, coupled with the desire to eat,” or “A severe lack of food.”

The same dictionary defines food insecurity as, “The state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food.” Neither condition is ideal, but hunger is a much more acute and dramatic affliction. A student living on pizza, peanut butter, pop tarts and microwave popcorn might be considered food insecure, but she wouldn’t be fainting in her seminars due to low blood sugar. And it would be misleading to call her hungry.

Perhaps most importantl­y, if the student in question is eating less, or less well than she’d like because she spent all her student aid money and part-time job earnings on her textbooks, tuition, and housing, then what the student really needs is probably help budgeting and learning how to live independen­tly — not free spaghetti.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to help students achieve healthier diets. But if that’s what’s going on, let’s be honest about it and not pretend it’s the same thing as relieving post- secondary students from abject poverty … or even not having enough food to eat.

Here’s what Ryerson’s Claire Davis had to say about her food bank’s goals:

“We don’t want students to be eating the same thing all the time because that’s all they can afford. We want them to nourish their bodies so they can focus on school and live a better life because of that.”

That’s an admirable sentiment. But helping provide a pleasant variety of meals and tools for selfactual­ization is a luxury, not a necessity. And it hardly seems fair to increase everyone’s tuition burden to accomplish it. ( Not to mention that the $ 186,000- plus Ryerson’s food bank will now receive each year would do far more long- term good if spent equipping students with basic budget and financial planning skills that they apparently really need.)

Higher education is extremely expensive, but part of any education plan is to sacrifice now to reap rewards in the future — which is why images of post-secondary students heating up endless bowls of Kraft Dinner usually evoke bemused sympathy, not horror. One of my friends in university ate a 13- cent package of ramen noodles every day to save cash and is now a prospering ophthalmol­ogist who can eat whatever he wants.

Not everyone will be that lucky ( the prospering, not the ramen), but it’s worth asking: Do the students who are laying out thousands of dollars on tuition and books — who are apparently spending so much money they literally can’t afford food — expect they will eventually land a job with a decent salary as a result of their temporary renunciati­ons?

If they do, maybe it isn’t such a crazy thing that they’re living through a few uncomforta­bly lean years in the meantime.

If they don’t, then choosing a post-secondary program over basic sustenance seems like woeful judgment.

Poverty, famine, and starvation are real, ugly, brutal problems and any person truly suffering from them deserves help. Let’s stop cheapening that dire need by implying university students who can’t afford a rainbow of organic produce amount to the same thing.

WE DON’T WANT STUDENTS TO BE EATING THE SAME THING ALL THE TIME.

 ?? ERNEST DOROSZUK / POSTMEDIA NEWS FILES ?? Ryerson University in Toronto voted to add a $2.50 tuition levy to pay for the student food bank.
ERNEST DOROSZUK / POSTMEDIA NEWS FILES Ryerson University in Toronto voted to add a $2.50 tuition levy to pay for the student food bank.
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