It’s that time of the year again, when many people can’t resist thoughts of juicy turkey, homemade stuffing and the feasting and celebration that is fast approaching. Unfortunately, an alarming number of Oregonians are hungry during the holiday season, and University students want to help.
OSPIRG and the Hamilton Complex residence hall staff will combat hunger in Eugene by collecting student donations at the Grab ‘N Go, located in the Hamilton lounge, every weekend throughout the holiday season.
Hamilton resident assistants Nicole Shanahan and Natalie Lindhorst-Ballast are responsible for initiating Hamilton Complex’s first food drive. It is a competition among Hamilton’s 10 halls. The drive, which began Sept. 8, allows students to donate items they purchase at the Grab ‘N’ Go at bins placed in each hall’s lounge. These bins will be available to students every Saturday and Sunday throughout November.
“We thought that by having our food drive as a competition between the halls, that it would be an even greater incentive for residents to donate food,” Shanahan said.
Lindhorst-Ballast and Shanahan say they hope the Hamilton food drive will do more than simply gather nonperishables.
“One of the major goals is to bring about an awareness about the issue of hunger,” Lindhorst-Ballast said. “To hopefully let residents know that people are not just hungry around the holiday seasons but throughout the rest of the year.”
OSPIRG will also collect donations in front of the Grab ‘N’ Go on Saturdays throughout the year, according to organizer Nathan Sutton.
“We tend to give up on hunger,” Sutton said. “We see it as a foreign, hopeless problem and ignore it. For that reason, most students are not well informed.”
However, he said the success of the OSPIRG food drive, which kicked off two weekends ago, shows students’ concern. In the first week, OSPIRG collected 154 pounds of food, which can provide an estimated 308 meals or feed a family of four for about 77 days, according to Food for Lane County, a nonprofit organization that distributes donations around the community.
Food from the Hamilton competition has not yet been counted. Shanahan said she doesn’t think having several food drives will affect overall contributions adversely.
“We feel that if there are a number of food drives going on at once, it just raises more awareness about hunger,” she said. “We feel that the more food drives that are going on, the more opportunities residents have to donate.”
Freshman Bo Caldwell donated food through OSPIRG.
“I think it is a great idea. People just end up wasting points at the end of the week, now they can do something really positive instead.”
According to data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Agriculture, Oregon trails only Texas and New Mexico with the third most severe hunger problem in the country. About 12.3 percent of Oregon households are classified as “food insecure,” with 5.7 percent of households going hungry every night.