29.03.2024

Why students at two prestigious schools are pushing administrators to tackle hunger on campus

To fight hunger on their college campuses, a group of students is going hungry. Students at Spelman College and Morehouse College, two prestigious historically black colleges in Atlanta, started a hunger strike last week to protest what they say is resistance from school administrators to help the hungry students in their midst.

At issue: whether students can donate their unused meal plan swipes to fellow students in need.

The students on strike say they’ve been agitating for months to bring a chapter of Swipe Out Hunger, a national initiative that partners with campuses to facilitate meal swipe donation programs, to their campus. But administrators are doing little to heed their call, students say, which is what prompted the strike and a petition this week.

“We’re simply saying that if it’s a meal plan that we’ve paid for then we should be able to donate to students who are not as fortunate”, said MaryPat Hector, one of the protest’s organizers.

For their part, Spelman officials say the protest has pushed them to do more to address hunger on the school’s campus. Spelman already offered a limited number of emergency meal swipes and students also had access to a food pantry nearby, according to a letter from the school’s president published Monday.

“More must be done to assure the safety and well-being of students who are experiencing hunger”, the letter reads. “We are also concerned, as well, for the safety and well-being of the students participating in a hunger strike to raise awareness about food insecurity.”

Spelman officials plan to meet with student representatives as well as staffers from Aramark, the company that manages food service at Spelman to “consider the students’ proposal to transfer portions of their meal plans to classmates in need.” (A representative from Aramark said the company has worked with other colleges to create meal swipe donation programs and hasn’t been approached by Spelman yet about a program at the school). Representatives from Spelman and Morehouse didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment beyond the letter.

In the meantime, the protest will continue until the school puts a plan to address students’ needs in place, Hector said.

The controversy comes as policymakers and higher education leaders are beginning to grapple with housing and food insecurity on college campuses. Students from a variety of backgrounds, including parents, working adults and low-income students are increasingly attending college as a college degree has become more necessary to participate in the workforce.

These students may be more likely than the typical college student of decades past to struggle with a lack of food and housing. What’s more, the rising cost of college and housing can make it difficult for even middle-class students to afford basic needs while at school. In response, colleges are setting up food pantries, giving students emergency grants, or participating in swipe-sharing programs to help them cope.

But often it takes pressure from students and other forces before the schools will address these challenges.

“Largely schools push back”, Rachel Sumekh, the founder of Swipe Out Hunger, said of colleges’ typical reaction to these kinds of proposals. That’s in part because allowing students to donate swipes gets at the heart of the tension between the mission of higher education institutions and a desire to bring in revenue, said Sara Goldrick-Rab, a Temple University professor who studies hunger and homelessness at college. Dining halls can be a major revenue source for the colleges as well as for the companies that hold the contract to provide the food, so allowing students to donate instead of waste swipes could cut into their profits.

In many cases when approached by students about swipe donation programs, colleges say it’s not immediately clear they can fit this type of initiative into their budget, Sumekh said. She typically advises student leaders to convince administrators that the school will get some kind of return from investing in the program, say through increased student retention rates.

So far, Sumekh’s organization has had success helping student leaders implement some form of meal swipe donation at 32 schools, she said. The logistics of the programs vary, but typically they involve students donating their meal swipes to some kind of fund that the school then uses to help other students in need.

These programs can be a particularly effective way to address the challenges hungry students face on campus because they allow these students to eat with their classmates, instead of relegating them to picking up a can of beans from a campus food pantry, Goldrick-Rab said. Still, colleges are often initially resistant to addressing hunger on their campuses and need to be pushed to take a more proactive approach like a swipe program, she said. That’s why students at Spelman and Morehouse are going to extremes to draw attention to the issue, she said.

“We tell people go to college for a better life”, she said. Students “can’t have the better life if you don’t make sure that they have their basic needs met so they can get their degree.”

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