By Ryan Kelley We all know the struggle. Eating
ramen noodles, peanut butter
and jelly sandwiches and vending
machine snacks is a way of life for
many college students. But for
some, hunger is a problem that
seriously impacts their mental and physical health
and academic success.
That’s why the City University of New York
(CUNY) is working to help students in poverty gain
access to more food on campuses throughout
the city. According to a recent press release from
CUNY, all but three of its universities now have
food pantries that offer free food to students in
need, and the three schools without a pantry offer
vouchers to help students buy meals.
At CUNY schools, approximately 42 percent of
all incoming freshmen come from households with
incomes less than $20,000, and nearly eight in 10
received free breakfasts and lunches during their
years in New York City Public Schools.
“Students are very resilient; they’re scraping
by, getting by as best they can. But when students
cannot meet their most basic needs, that’s when
they stop coming to school,” said Deborah Hart,
the Single Stop director at Borough of Manhattan
Community College. Harte took the lead on
creating the school’s food pantry in April 2018 with
help from several donors.
But CUNY is going even further than simply
opening food pantries. Here are some strategies
that have been particularly effective in increasing
the number of students who have access to food.
Offering food to
families
The food pantries at Bronx Community College,
Kingsborough Community College, and others,
serve students and their immediate family
members, and multiple visits are allowed. At
LaGuardia Community College in Queens, the
on-campus pantry distributes food in quantity to
accomodate an individual or a family for an entire
week.
Fresh food on
campuses
Brooklyn College works with the Corbyn Hill
Food Project to offer fresh vegetables, fruit and
eggs to students who are eligible. Hunter College
The urban farm at Kingsborough Community College
(Photo by Andrew Casner for Kingsborough Community College)
partners with GrowNYC, which delivers fresh
produce to the campus on a weekly basis. At
Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, the Campaign
Against Hunger drives an RV onto campus two
times each month to provide fresh food, SNAP
screenings, cooking demos and more
Partnerships with Food
Bank for NYC
All but two CUNY campuses are partners with
the Food Bank for NYC, a partnership that enables
CUNY pantries to order food online at a greatly
reduced cost.
Teaming up with
campus vendors
At LaGuardia Community College and John Jay
College, among others, the food voucher programs
allow students to purchase breakfast, lunch or
dinner at the colleges’ cafeteria. At LaGuardia, the
meal includes a beverage, entree and side item for
just $5.
Combating the stigma
Students often feel embarrassed for having
to visit the campus food pantry. But at Lehman
College, students who qualify for “dining dollars”
are allocated money to their student ID cards, and
they swipe the cards at the dining hall to buy food
just like other students while maintaining their
privacy. At the Borough of Manhattan Community
College, students who visit the food pantry are
given nondescript bags to protect their privacy.
Performing Outreach
At Guttman Community College, students
receive periodic emails, Instagram posts and flyers
uploaded to the school’s digital monitors that
promote its food-insecurity programs. Students
Image courtesy of Food Bank for NYC
often turn to teachers for help, so the College of
Staten Island reaches out to teachers and staff to
ensure they know the food resources available to
students.
Growing food on
campus
Bronx Community College, Hostos Community
College and Kingsborough Community College
are the only three CUNY campuses on which food
is grown. At Kingsborough, which has the largest
grow operation, the farm produced 3,000 pounds
of food in 2018 and gave it to 1,100 students who
attended distribution sessions each Thursday.
While the need for pantries and vouchers
persists, these efforts have greatly reduced the
level of food insecurity experienced by New York’s
college students. According to studies by Nicholas
Freudenberg, distinguished professor of public
health at CUNY Graduate School of Public Health
and Health Policy, the portion of the student body
struggling to afford food declined from 39 percent
in 2010, to 21 percent in 2018.
“Pantries can help students, but they can also
help us to get the attention of public officials and
increase public awareness of the need,” said
Freudenberg. “These contributions can be as
important as the food the pantries give out.”
Image courtesy of CUNY
CUNY schools work
to combat food
insecurity
QNS.COM
SUMMER 2019 11
/QNS.COM