Students fight for food
Students and advocates seek to address food insecurity on Hamline University’s campus.
by Christian Buonfiglio
On a typical Wednesday afternoon, the Hamline Food Resource Center is quiet, but steady. Students are asked for their name, ID, email, and age, and in return, they have unlimited access to the first food pantry on campus. First-years take packets of whole-wheat cereal and small jars of peanut butter for snacking, while older students examine boxes of fresh potatoes, carrots, and onions to take home for groceries.
“No student will be asked to ‘prove their need’,” explains the website for Feed Your Brain, the student-led initiative that put the Food Resource Center together. “We want to eliminate barriers to accessing the pantry, not create them! [sic]”
The goals of Feed Your Brain on campus are simple. One, to teach Hamline’s students and faculty about food insecurity. Two, to increase food access for Hamline students. Three, to provide a space that serves both needs.
“Even if [students are] not experiencing food insecurity, they probably have friends who are, or moments where they’ve experienced it,” Americorps VISTA Emma Kiley said.
Kiley, ’19, is an organizer and coordinator from the nonprofit organization Americorps aiding the fight against food insecurity at Hamline. After several students discussed their experiences with hunger at a Hamline Teach-In on immigration, Kiley, along with a group of students and faculty, sent out a survey in the 2016-17 school year to gather data on food insecurity.
“Of the students who responded to the survey,” according to Feed Your Brain’s website, which can be found at sites.google.com/hamline.edu/feedyourbrain, “70% noted that they could not afford to eat nutritionally balanced meals, 50% of respondents said they cut or skipped meals to stretch their food budget, and nearly 70% noted that they had difficulty paying their rent.”
Since its inception, the Hamline Food Resource Center has distributed thousands of pounds of food and served hundreds of students. However, Kiley feels that this alone is not enough.
“You can go to a food pantry a couple of times a week and be okay,” Kiley said, “but how do we go past that, and think about equity in terms of where food is located, and how people get their food?”
A food pantry, according to Kiley, helps students meet their caloric needs, but it cannot replicate the communal experience of buying or growing food locally, then preparing and sharing it with loved ones. Kiley has helped draft a proposal for a teaching kitchen on campus to meet this need.
“There can be workshops [taught there],” Kiley said. “Faculty could design courses around being able to use a kitchen, and student groups or individual students could rent the space to cook food for themselves, their friends, or their family.”
These solutions, however, are still stopgaps until the Hamline administration puts a together a formal plan to address food insecurity. Kiley said when she first spoke to the Board of Trustees about food insecurity, there were misconceptions about college life she had to address.
“[Some thought that] all college students eat ramen for four years, that’s just how it is. You graduate, and you’re better off for it,” Kiley said. “Then, once you graduate, you have a great job, you don’t have any loans, and you just go on with your life and everything’s fine.”
Kiley said that her efforts to shift the discussion, however, are already paying off.
“There’s slow change in the administration,” Kiley said, “and I’ve shifted my education and advocacy work to be more towards faculty and administration . . . I’m talking [to them] about retention rates and the future of higher education.””
Kiley hopes to continue this conversation at an upcoming banquet hosted by Feed Your Brain.
““That’s going to be a really intentional space where we are inviting faculty, board members, and students to gather and talk about what solutions students want and what stake Hamline has in this topic.”
Among the issues for the administration to help solve is the lack of variety and culturally appropriate food available from Hamline’s Dining Services.
Kiley said students have criticized the lack of vegetarian and vegan options at the Bishop’s Bistro, which usually consists of steamed vegetables and the occasional curry or stir fry. Kiley also raised concerns about the lack of culturally appropriate food items for Muslim students even at the Food Resource Center.
“Sometimes, when we try to provide foods that we think are going to be culturally appropriate, we end up messing up,” Kiley said, “and that can be as damaging as not trying to provide them.”
The fight against food insecurity at Hamline has largely been led by students and nonprofit partners. In time, Hamline’s administration may have a program in place to keep students food secure, but for now, the Food Resource Center remains stocked with bags of red beans and boxes of fresh potatoes.