Pantries tackle campus hunger
Students, others turn to food banks for help amid hard economic times
Ela Martinez-moreno says she felt it was her fault, as if she had failed to follow some rule.
She had grown up in a middleclass family, earned Latin American studies and culinary degrees and gotten a job working with at-risk youth at a non-profit.
Then, after Martinez-moreno left her job to study food science at Oregon State University in Corvallis, her boyfriend unexpectedly lost his job. She realized they needed help.
She found part of the answer to their problem at Oregon State’s food pantry, though she was hesitant at first to use it.
“It’s a really humbling experience,” Martinez-moreno says, but once she was in the door, the pantry became “a relief” and “a nice added bonus” to help her along. It was a positive experience that she now aims to help share as the pantry’s paid outreach coordinator.
“The more comfortable you are, the more you will feel it’s a viable resource for you,” Martinez-moreno says.
Oregon State is one of a growing number of colleges and universities nationwide that have a food pantry on campus for students and others struggling to get enough food and supplies.
The pantries offer food and supplies, from cereal to meats to produce to toiletries, as well as a feeling of camaraderie and dignity, according to pantry staff members and volunteers.
Tennessee State and Austin Peay State universities in Tennessee, the University of Arkansas, the University of Georgia and Utah Valley University are among the schools to establish food pantries in the past year.
Angela Oxford, director of the University of Arkansas’ Center for Community Engagement, says she estimates there currently are about 25 universities and colleges that have campus food pantries.
“We’ve been contacted by at least 10 different campuses in the last year” about how to start a food pantry, Oxford says.
Daniel Farcas, a doctoral student at West Virginia University, says he visits the university’s pantry about once a week, most often for diapers and occasionally for food. Farcas says he didn’t know about the pantry before he became a parent.
“After I got married and had kids, I started looking for help,” says Farcas, whose wife is a graduate student.
Farcas says that he is grateful to the organizers and volunteers and that they understand the challenges faced by students such as himself.
The Oregon State pantry, opened in 2009, sees several hundred students, plus community members, each month, according to MartinezMoreno. Some of these students are supporting families or can’t get help from their parents, she says, but the list doesn’t end there.
“There is no typical student who accesses the food pantry,” she says.
Feeding America, a hunger-relief organization and national network of food banks, has seen an increase of people across many demographic categories who lack consistent access to an adequate amount of healthy food, according to Ross Fraser, the organization’s director of media relations.
“It’s not a surprise,” says Feeding America President and CEO Vicki Escarra, that college students are among those facing insecurity over food and who put other critical expenses over food.
Furthermore, full-time students are usually not eligible to receive food stamps under the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, according to Brady Koch, director of SNAP outreach at Feeding America.
According to the most recent data, Feeding America served 37 million people in 2009, up from 25 million in 2005, through its emergency food centers, which include soup kitchens, food pantries and shelters, says Fraser, citing the organization’s “Hunger in America” studies.
Some campus pantries, such as those at West Virginia University and Michigan State University, have purchased items from food banks that are Feeding America members, according to pantry staff members.
Julia Lyon, a student volunteer and chairwoman of the University of Arkansas’ pantry, says that while the number of students struggling with hunger is “something that’s kind of under the radar,” it’s clearly a problem on campus. Since it opened in February 2011, the pantry has met more than 800 requests for food and supplies from students and staff members, Lyon says.
At Michigan State, the food pantry has seen the effects of the tough economic times, says Nate SmithTyge, a doctoral student and the pantry’s director.
The pantry, established in 1993, saw a spike in users in the 2005-06 academic year, and the number remains relatively high, he says, with about 200 to 300 people served every other Wednesday.
Both on- and off-campus donations help fill the shelves in addition to items purchased or otherwise collected, according to pantry volunteers and staff members.
Sarah Howard, a student volunteer at WVU’S pantry, open since the fall of 2010, says non-perishable donations come from a variety of sources, from fraternities and sororities to community members.
Many of the pantries emphasize discretion and aim to make what could be an embarrassing and difficult experience as comfortable as possible. Having students serving other students, Lyon says, helps make the pantry less intimidating.
“We’re overcoming the element of embarrassment more than logistics,” Lyon says.