Food Security Advocates reached out via email to the campus community on Nov. 21 to announce their open forum. The email attached the results of the SUNY wide survey (pictured above) for student view (Emma Boskovski/ News Editor).
The SUNY Food Insecurity Task Force recently published the results of a survey conducted last year that reached students SUNY-wide regarding their experiences with hunger. Ten percent of Geneseo students participated and, in response, the Food Security Advocates held an open forum on Nov. 21 at 4 p.m. in the Union Hunt Room.
According to information provided at the Food Insecurity Advocates open forum, the survey was sent out to SUNY students via email last spring and exactly 520 Geneseo students responded.
In 2018, at the request of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the SUNY Food Insecurity Task Force was created to investigate food insecurity on college campuses. According to the SUNY website, the task force is comprised of students, staff, faculty, food service providers and other community organizations.
Food Security Advocates is a student organization associated with the Office of Student Volunteerism and Community Engagement created to enhance food security and hunger relief efforts.
Co-chair of Food Security Advocates Robbie Economou said that Food Insecurity Advocates is trying to expand their outreach and hopes to research ways to alleviate food insecurity on campus.
“The SUNY Food and Security Task Force has been doing research, such as this survey, to investigate food insecurity on campuses,” Economou said. “This is the first survey that has come out that’s had specific information about Geneseo.”
According to the survey results, approximately 40 percent of Geneseo students said they didn’t eat when they were hungry because they couldn’t afford it. Economou said he interpreted the survey results to reveal that 30 to 40 percent of Geneseo students face some degree of food insecurity.
“It basically says two in five students have skipped meals because they could not afford them,” Economou said.
Further, the survey results demonstrate that more than one in four students were unable to focus as a result of their hunger. As discussed at the open forum, though the survey lacks detail, its contents should still be regarded as notable and quite possibly indicative of a larger issue.
“We obviously don’t know their degree of food insecurity and if it’s chronic or just one time, but it does definitely show that there’s at least 205 students who have a food insecurity problem,” Economou said. “And probably more because these survey results do seem statistically significant.”
According to Economou, food insecurity at Geneseo has been formally recognized in the past but Food Security Advocates is unsure of the degree to which it has become.
“It was really a mystery,” Economou said. “We had connections to a couple food insecure students, but we didn’t really know the extent of the problem.”
The campus’s level of food insecurity has also been a mystery to current students as well.
“Yeah I definitely didn’t know how bad food insecurity was,” geology major sophomore Victoria Taylor said.
Food Security Advocates hope to do further research to determine the extent of the issue and aims to be more specific in their findings regarding the students’ place of residence and their experience with hunger.
“It’ll probably be next semester, but we definitely just want to follow up. We have a lot of other questions that we want to ask,” Economou said. “One thing that’s really important is whether the students live off-campus or on-campus, since on-campus students are required to have a meal plan. So, to a certain extent, you might expect them to have less food insecurity. We would also ask more specific questions about food insecurity; we would ask questions about if this is chronic or if it was one time.”
According to an article published by SUNY News on Aug. 29, 2018 from the Office of Governor Cuomo, Gov. Cuomo announced that all SUNY or CUNY colleges must have a food pantry for students in need by the end of the 2018 fall semester.
“At the time, only like 50 percent of those colleges actually had food pantries, but that’s changed since then,” Economou said. “I think that every single college has some sort of on-campus or off-campus food pantry.”
According to the SUNY website, SUNY Geneseo has a partnership with The Groveland Food Pantry.
The pantry is located at the Central Presbyterian church on 31 Center St. It is open on Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Wednesdays from 4 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
“For the first time, visitors will receive a couple items from the food pantry without any sort of certification or anything,” Economou said. “After that, you’d have to get a note from the financial aid office showing that you are on FAFSA; they also make exceptions for students obviously because FAFSA isn’t the only indicator of food insecurity.”
Although its hours are limited and the pantry is not directly on campus, Economou still encourages students to go when needed.
The survey presented a lack of student awareness of possible campus resources. According to the survey, only about 18 percent of students said they knew how to receive assistance from the college when struggling with hunger.
“It shows that less than 20 percent of students actually know how they could receive food assistance if they needed it,” Economou said.
Economou said he is hopeful that Food Security Advocates will strive to increase the student body’s knowledge of this issue.
“The Food Security Advocates and the Center for Volunteerism will be doing a lot more to publicize this information,” Economou said. “We were talking about doing some sort of ad campaign to help normalize the practice.”
According to Economou, a location on campus dedicated to this issue could be beneficial to distributing information and raising awareness.
“I think it would be good for at least some sort of office or some sort of place you’re supposed to go, because there’s not a place where you’re told ‘if you don’t know what you’re eating today go to this place,’ which I think would be incredibly valuable,” he said.
A major issue discussed at the open forum was students’ unwillingness and discomfort that surrounds going to a food pantry. Many students feel they aren’t eligible to accept food from the food pantry, according to Economou.
The survey’s results indicate only approximately 11 percent feel comfortable going to a food pantry and receiving assistance.
“It should be totally okay for students to do that, nobody should feel ashamed or that other people deserve more,” Economou said. “No one should feel bad about receiving a donation.”
As discussed at the open forum, the stigma of college students not having money could add to the normalization of students’ daily struggles acquiring food.
“I didn’t even know food insecurity on campus was a thing,” business major freshman Kylie Seiler said. “I know college students struggle with money, but I didn’t think it was that serious.”