In the midst of a global pandemic, ASUO is taking a refreshed look at student food security this academic year. This can be seen through the efforts of the executive branch and the senate’s launch of the food security committee, one of the senate’s three new internal committees this fall.
Senator Kyle Geffon, a junior at the University of Oregon, is heading the committee. After his election in the spring, Geffon said he started looking for ways he could make a difference in the UO community.
“I remember thinking when I was a freshman I always had a bunch of meal points that I didn’t use,” he said, “and then my rollover account would fill up, and I would never really use it. I’d have to go buy a bunch of random things that I didn’t really want.”
Geffon knew that UO had a number of food security programs in place and thought his idea could be integrated into existing programs. “This seems like an easy solution,” he recalled thinking over the summer. “If you have the resources here and you have the problem here, if you can just connect them. That seems like something that would work out.”
Geffon’s idea is similar to University of California-Los Angeles’s Swipe out Hunger initiative, which allows students to donate unused swipes to those who are food insecure.
With that in mind, Geffon reached out to Taylor McHolm, the director of UO’s Student Sustainability Center and one of the co-directors for UO’s food security task force.
Although food security task force Co-Director Marcus Langford said the solution isn’t as easy as just transferring meal points to a friend, the Student Sustainability Center plans on collaborating with UO Housing to put Geffon’s plan into action. Langford said they’re hoping to get it off the ground during the winter or spring terms.
Food security initiatives aren’t new to ASUO operations. Former ASUO President Amy Schenk led the pilot program during the 2017-2018 academic year.
McHolm said the Student Sustainability Center has now launched six different programs — Ducks Feeding Ducks, SNAP enrollment assistance, Produce Drops, the Student Food Pantry, Leftover Textover and cooking classes through Duck Nest. All the programs are listed on the Food Security tab on the Dean of Students website. Hearth and Table and FOOD for Lane County provide additional aid in partnership with the task force.
“I didn’t really have a personal connection to how big food security was until I had moved off campus,” ASUO President Isaiah Boyd said. Although he ran on a platform that included food security in his first ASUO election bid ahead of the 2019-2020 school year, he explained it wasn’t an issue that he experienced firsthand until sophomore year, when he was no longer living in the dorms.
“I realized, ‘whoa, this is a serious concern for me,’” Boyd said, “as it is for a lot of students. Between the in-affordability of housing in Eugene for college students, measured on top of having to work a part time job on top of being a full time student, and then figuring out utilities and rent, it’s too much.”
Boyd said ASUO has contributed to food security efforts on campus financially, using revenue they brought in during their Street Faire.
However, due to COVID-19, the ASUO Street Faire didn’t happen this fall. “That made me realize that our side — ASUO’s side — of really helping support the community and food insecurity isn’t as sustainable as it should be,” Boyd said. “Relying on the proceeds that we receive from the Street Faire to then give back to students isn’t enough. There’s more that we can be doing.”
While he pointed to the Student Sustainability Center’s work as hugely important, Boyd said “relying on only one organization to do all of this coverage isn’t fair in terms of their capacity and also for students in general.”
Boyd thinks that ASUO can do more to make food security initiatives more equitable. “There’s a lot of other areas that we could provide more specifically to,” he said. “Minority or BIPOC communities that might have even a harder time in terms of accessibility need to have special coverage. We need to be able to be providing, saying we have these programs that exist for them.”
For Boyd, this means reaching out to student groups around campus and figuring out who of the UO student body is in need. “Those that don’t have the resources, we give them a little extra,” he said, “so that they’re able to maintain their way through college.”
One idea he has is to build a food pantry in the EMU. Following the produce drop outside the EMU amphitheater, the food security task force could move remaining food to a walk in fridge where students could access it throughout the week if needed. Boyd is drawn to this idea due to the EMU’s central location on campus, which means that students wouldn’t have to travel far to obtain fresh produce.
“The heart of it,” he said, “is trying to make things more accessible, listening to the experts, trying to connect with students and hear their needs. But the biggest power that I think ASUO has is to serve as an amplifier for student voices and then seeing where we can provide financial support and leading initiatives.”
Even without the Street Faire revenue, ASUO is in a place where it can provide monetary support to a number of programs on campus. Unlike most years, it currently has a $1.3 million surplus, and Boyd calculated that it will see a comparable figure next year. “We’re in a really great position,” he said, “where we have substantial funding that we could use to kickstart a lot of these programs, that we can use to immediately respond to food insecurity needs.”
Boyd said he hopes that ASUO’s legislative and executive branches can work together in the distribution of this money, and that he sees the senate’s food security committee as an avenue through which to pursue this.
Beyond ASUO’s finances, Langford has other plans in the works. He’s in the process of creating a grant which those in the UO community can use to launch additional food security initiatives — so long as a student is on the proposed team.
“It will be an opportunity to assist students who may need it,” he said, “but also that will hopefully be a mechanism for folks around the institution — faculty, staff and students — to participate in supporting students in a real, tangible and concrete way.”
Langford said he hopes to get the application forms out by the end of October. In the meantime, there’s plenty of existing services for students, and the food security task force is working hard to get the word out.
According to McHolm, all of the existing programs have the capacity to serve a larger population than they currently are. “If we saw more students at the pantry or we saw more students at produce drop or we saw more students at SNAP, we have the resources available to meet that need, whatever it is,” he said. “We really just are trying to get as many students to come and access them as is necessary.”
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is a particular focus in the midst of a pandemic. Since it exists across the country, it’s accessible for students who aren’t in Eugene.
“The thing that we constantly want to underscore to folks is that decisions to skip a meal or decisions to spend money on books instead of food, none of those decisions are okay with us,” McHolm said. “We really want to make sure that students know that these resources exist and have access to them.”
