How state budget crises are impacting food security on college campuses

As 2016 gets underway with state budgets still not approved in Illinois and Pennsylvania, state grants for higher education remain in limbo. For some students, that means not having enough money for their meal plan or groceries this past semester.

This school year, the holdup of grant funding has made a tough time even tougher. “We have students who have become homeless as a result. They haven’t gotten their [grant] money and so their landlords have not let them stay,” says Leah Cassellia, director of the Office of Student Involvement at Kutztown University. “We have students who … dropped their meal plan so that it would free up some money for them, but they don’t necessarily use that money on food; it may be for other things, like books.”

Keeping students fed in The Keystone State

Until Pennsylvania’s General Assembly and Gov. Tom Wolf agree on a budget (a stopgap budget was approved Tuesday, Dec. 29), need-based grants from the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency—which last year provided 155,000 students an average of $2,869 for college, says Keith New, PHEAA communications director—are on hold.

Come the end of each semester at Kutztown in Allentown, Penn., some students already are scraping the bottom of the barrel, Cassellia says. During finals week last spring, her office informally matched up students in need with those who had extra meals on their dining plan. “They had to meet up at the dining hall together to be swiped in, and they would share a meal together,” she says.

Before starting the grassroots effort, Cassellia had hoped to partner with Kutztown’s dining services to allow students with unused meals to anonymously donate them and provide an equivalent number of meal passes to students in need.

Unfortunately, the two weren't able to establish a formal donation program. “[The request] came with only a couple weeks left in the semester and we did not have anything in our place in our software that would allow for meals to be donated to students,” says Kent Dahlquist, director of Housing, Residence Life and Dining Services. “We recommended to Leah and her office that our block plan allows students to use their meals that they have remaining … with other students.”

In addition to software, budget can also be a hurdle for foodservice operators when it comes to meal donation. “Normally when you do a budget, you work under the assumption that so many meals are going to be skipped,” Dahlquist says. Sharing a meal with a fellow student won't be possible come the fall, when KU’s block meal plan is replaced by an anytime program without a set number of meals.

Cassellia and her colleagues created a makeshift food pantry in her office during the spring 2015 semester and sought a dedicated space to launch a full-fledged pantry for fall 2015. “A space for a food pantry on a college campus should be ideally in a discreet but accessible location,” she says. “Those spaces are often used by student organizations and the available space just wasn’t granted to us.”

With an estimated 3,000 students affected by the lack of state funds, KU provided tuition credits and a $200 grant advance in Bear Bucks, which can be used at bookstores, among other retail shops. But those bucks didn’t last long and students who rely on grant money for rent or food rather than tuition are coming up short, Cassellia says. Without a dedicated food pantry space, the office partnered with Friend, Inc. Community Services to pilot KU-designated pick-up days at its existing food pantry on the first Thursday of each month. Seven students attended the first day in September, 15 in October and 27 in November.

Nick Iula, resident district manager for Chartwells, oversees dining service at Shippensburg University in Shippensburg, Penn., and encountered food insecurity among students for the first time this semester. “Students were using their funds to buy books instead of meals ... so many supporters rushed to lend a hand to those students in need,” Iula says.

Volunteers from Dining Services, Residential Life, Student Affairs and Student Senate, among other departments, formed a campus-wide food insecurity committee. Iula’s department provided meal vouchers for the university to distribute to students in need and also teamed up with the Student Senate to make 250 peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches for hungry students.

“Campus dining may not always be the first to know that certain situations exist or are growing,” Iula says. Staying connected with administrators and campus spiritual centers or organizations is a good start, he says. “Just last night, a student called me asking for food and I did not hesitate to provide support. It’s part of my job to ensure students are fed, and to help out someone who is hungry is just the right thing to do.”

MAP grants in the Midwest

Meanwhile in Illinois, the Illinois Student Assistance Commission awards state-funded grants to residents based on need through the Monetary Award Program. Until Gov. Bruce Rauner and Illinois lawmakers agree on a budget, the state cannot disburse MAP funds to colleges and universities on students’ behalf, according to Lynne Baker, managing director of communications for ISAC.

“The status of funding right now is that there is no MAP funding bill that is poised for passage before the end of the calendar year, and the governor has indicated that he would veto a funding bill that is not part of a comprehensive budget resolution,” Baker says.

Baker estimates that MAP would serve 125,000 to 130,000 students this school year; the average grant is about $2,700. Many Illinois schools have tapped reserves or reallocated funds in order to provide students with an advance on their MAP grants, in hope that they will be reimbursed by the state when a budget is in place.

At Northern Illinois University, which receives the most MAP grants in the state, the president and board of trustees have provided loans to MAP-eligible students in the amount expected from the state. “We have already renewed that offer for next semester,” says Joe King, acting director for media and public relations at NIU. “Therefore, our students have not, and should not, be feeling the impact of the budget stalemate in this regard.”

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has fronted MAP grant money to eligible students as well, but resources are in place for students who might find themselves with less money for food as a result of funding issues with other programs such as Illinois Veterans Grants. Student organization Illini Fighting Hunger supports an on-campus food pantry operated by The Wesley Foundation, says Dawn Aubrey, Associate Director of Housing and Dining. Students also can use their meal plans to purchase non-perishables from retail locations and donate them to the pantry via collection boxes located in residence halls. “Students very much want to help each other,” Aubrey says.