The prevalence of student hunger fell by nearly half between 2010 and 2015, but campuses are redoubling their efforts to address the substantial need that remains
The City University of New York has long been a leader in addressing food insecurity, and since the launch of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s “No Student Goes Hungry” initiative, the University has redoubled those efforts. CUNY is taking active measures to connect tens of thousands more students to life-changing resources that will contribute to their physical and mental well-being and academic success.
“We know that hungry students are less likely to focus on their studies and graduate, and we recognize the critical importance of reducing the prevalence of food insecurity across the University. Because of its bearing on health and educational outcomes, combating student food insecurity is also a social justice priority,” said Interim Chancellor Vita C. Rabinowitz. “Our campuses have been approaching this problem with increased urgency, and some have devised innovative, effective new interventions. Now, CUNY is working to identify and institutionalize the best programs and practices.”
Food insecurity, defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as having limited access to adequate food due to a lack of money or other resources, can be a prevalent issue among students at CUNY, where 42% of all first-time freshmen come from households with incomes of $20,000 or less, and nearly eight in 10 received free breakfasts and lunches during their years attending New York City public schools.
When he announced his No Student Goes Hungry initiative in December 2017, Gov. Cuomo said that every college campus would have a pantry or provide another stigma-free form of food assistance. Consistent with what the governor proposed, all but three of CUNY’s undergraduate campuses now have a food pantry; on those where a pantry is unfeasible, vouchers are distributed to help students buy meals, and at least one staff member takes responsibility for assisting students who are food-insecure. Ten campuses provide both a pantry and vouchers. With generous support from the Carroll and Milton Petrie Foundation, all colleges have funds in place to help combat food insecurity and also to issue emergency grants, which can help students meet pressing needs in time of pronounced crisis.
“Students are very resilient; they’re scraping by, getting by as best they can. But when students cannot meet their most basic needs, that’s when they stop coming to school,” said Deborah Harte, the longtime Single Stop director at Borough of Manhattan Community College. Single Stop connects students to food aid and other services. Harte spearheaded the creation of the school’s food pantry in April 2018 with financial help from the Petrie Foundation, health-insurer UnitedHealthcare and other donors. By January, more than two tons of food had been distributed to more than 340 students and their families.
As crucial as the pantries have been in addressing emergency needs, they are not the sole structural solution to food insecurity on CUNY campuses, nor are they designed to be so.
“Pantries can be viewed as a hub for connecting students to other services, such as SNAP, which is a more significant, robust solution to food insecurity,” said Nicholas Freudenberg, distinguished professor of public health at CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy and director of the CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute. “Pantries can help students, but they can also help us to get the attention of public officials and increase public awareness of the need. These contributions can be as important as the food the pantries give out.”
Freudenberg has conducted three studies of CUNY student food insecurity, in 2010, 2015 and 2018. His survey samples are statistically representative of, and the results are generalizable to, the total undergraduate population. The studies found that food insecurity among CUNY undergraduates — those who reported they’d often or sometimes experienced two or more of four USDA indicators of food insecurity in the previous 12 months — declined by nearly half from 2010 to 2015, from 39% to 22%, and fell to 21% in 2018. Freudenberg attributes much of the drop to the recovery of the nation’s economy since 2010, and to state and local changes that eased the application process for SNAP aid (food stamps). Still, he acknowledges the value of providing immediate emergency food aid to hungry students and sees potential to build on the progress.
“Individual campuses have come up with innovative, effective solutions,” Freudenberg said. “And now, CUNY must identify ways to scale those innovations and deliver them to the system as a whole.”
From Lehman College in the Bronx, where students may schedule food pantry visits online, to Borough of Manhattan Community College, which mandates inclusion of information about the campus Single Stop office on all course syllabuses, schools across the CUNY system have developed an array of approaches to channel more students to available resources and address food insecurity.
“The needs of CUNY students can vary from one campus to another. Staff, faculty and students have come together to create effective and thoughtful strategies — from pantries to vouchers to grab-and-go bags to fresh food boxes delivered directly to the campuses, said Christopher Rosa, Interim Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, noting that colleges are meeting students where they are. “Hunger at CUNY reflects hunger in America,” Rosa added. “We know that a long-term solution is imperative. At the same time, when students come to school hungry or have limited resources to feed their families, our colleges are stepping in to address those immediate needs.”
Here are some other successful approaches to food insecurity that are being instituted across CUNY:
- Serving students and their families: At Bronx Community College and Kingsborough Community College, among others, the food pantry serves students and their immediate family members, and multiple visits are allowed. At LaGuardia Community College in Queens, the on-campus food pantry serves students Monday through Friday as a walk-in for nonperishable provisions and fresh produce. Food items are student-selected and disbursed in quantity to accommodate an individual or family for an entire week.
- Bringing fresh food to campus: Working with the Corbin Hill Food Project, Brooklyn College identifies eligible students through an application process. At no cost, eligible students can visit an on-campus distribution site on a weekly basis and pick up fresh vegetables, fruit and eggs. Hunter College partners with GrowNYC, which on a weekly basis delivers fresh produce to the Upper East Side campus. Fresh food boxes are available at a reduced cost of $14 per box, and dozens of boxes each week are distributed to students in need, at no cost to the student. At Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, The Campaign Against Hunger drives its Fresh Vibes Market, a custom-fitted RV, onto campus two times each month to provide nutritious food, SNAP screenings and cooking demos. Students, teachers and college employees in need are given $10 vouchers to purchase fresh produce. In its first semester, the program has served 125 people.
- Collaborating with Food Bank for NYC: All but two campuses with pantries are members of Food Bank for NYC. The partnership enables CUNY pantries to order food online and at a greatly reduced cost, and the organization provides technical assistance, nutritional guidance and certification in food handling.
- Collaborating with campus vendors: The food voucher programs at schools including LaGuardia Community College and John Jay College are provided in collaboration with the campus food vendors and allow students to purchase breakfast, lunch or dinner at the college’s cafeteria. At LaGuardia, the meal includes a beverage, entrée and side item for only $5. The Single Stop multiservice office at Kingsborough Community College distributes about 150 vouchers per week, supported by the Petrie Foundation. Each $10 voucher enables a student to buy two meals in the school cafeteria, and students may take two vouchers every two weeks.
- Negating the stigma: Many students do not use food pantries because of their feelings of helplessness or failure. Lehman College in the Bronx identifies students in need through an application process. Eligible students receive “Dining Dollars,” a financial allocation that is added to their student ID cards. These students swipe their IDs in the same way as other students to purchase food at on-campus facilities, enabling them to maintain their privacy while utilizing assistance. At BMCC’s Panther Pantry, food is packaged in nondescript bags to protect students’ privacy.
- Emphasizing outreach: At Guttman Community College, the food-insecurity programs are promoted to students through periodic emails, Instagram posts and flyers uploaded to the school’s digital monitors. During finals period in December, Guttman promoted a campaign to remind students to “feed their brains” to study better by visiting the food pantry if they were hungry. Because students often turn to their teachers for help, The College of Staten Island reaches out not only to students, but to faculty and staff as well, to be certain that they are aware of campus food security resources.
- Growing food on campus: Kingsborough Community College is one of three CUNY campuses on which food is grown, distributed and used in nutrition and culinary arts courses. The quarter-acre KCC Urban Farm, founded in 2011 at the oceanfront campus in Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, produces thousands of pounds of fresh organic produce each June through mid-November. The farm’s Bring It Home program offers free classes on basic cooking skills using the farm-grown produce, as well as food to take home. In 2018, the farm produced 3,000 pounds of food, which was given to 1,100 students who attended distribution sessions each Thursday — an average of 40 to 50 students in each of 22 weeks. The farm is supported through Kingsborough’s workforce development office and several grants. Food is also grown and distributed in smaller quantities at Bronx Community College and Hostos Community College in the Bronx.
As much as these varied programs have helped, the need persists. According to Freudenberg’s data, there are still more than 50,000 CUNY undergraduates grappling with some degree of food insecurity. What accounts for that need? CUNY’s student population is a microcosm of New York City; according to Hunger Free America, some 12.8% of the city’s population experienced some form of food insecurity between 2015 and 2017.
Almost 80% of first-time freshmen come to CUNY from the NYC Department of Education. These students embark on college without the breakfasts, lunches and subsidized transit passes that they received in primary and secondary school and, in many cases, an incomplete grasp of the expenses they’ll face during college and their ability to meet them. It is also difficult for most able-bodied college students to qualify for SNAP benefits unless they meet eligibility requirements that include working 20 hours per week, attending classes full-time while caring for a dependent child or taking part in state or federally financed work study. Single Stop offices, in operation on every community college campus and at John Jay, helped students secure some $17.8 million in food assistance benefits in 2018. The University is seeking to expand Single Stop to each campus, a move that would help connect thousands more students to resources.
There is also a lingering lack of awareness of the supports that are available on CUNY campuses, and a reluctance among many students to utilize them. According to the CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute, only about 17% of food-insecure students in 2015 were aware of any on-campus resources available to them or had utilized food assistance in the previous year.
To counter that lack of awareness, the CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute and Healthy CUNY launched the CUNY Food Security Advocates as a demonstration project in January 2018. The project prepared students at John Jay and Hostos Community College to act to reduce food insecurity and hunger on their campuses. Food Security Advocates were equipped to educate their peers about such benefit programs as SNAP and WIC. They connected their peers to campus food pantries and Single Stop centers, and worked to reduce the stigma associated with food assistance programs. Students who completed the trainings and 100-hour field placement received a $1,000 stipend. The results were promising: In one semester, 22 student food-advocates connected some 1,200 students to available programs. Efforts are being made to secure financing that would sustain and expand this promising concept.
“Given how many low-income students attend CUNY schools, it’s no wonder that many struggle to afford healthy food as they deal with the rising cost of rent and transportation,” said Tanzina Ahmed, an assistant professor of psychology at Kingsborough Community College, who has researched and written about student food insecurity. “That’s why it’s heartening to know that many CUNY campuses have opened innovative programs that support hungry students and mark food insecurity as a visible problem. Ultimately, food insecurity is a problem that emerges from broad structural issues in American society — including increasing rates of income inequality — and it’s a problem that CUNY is confronting directly on campus.”
The City University of New York is the nation’s leading urban public university. Founded in 1847, CUNY counts 13 Nobel Prize and 24 MacArthur (“Genius”) grant winners among its alumni. CUNY students, alumni and faculty have garnered scores of other prestigious honors over the years in recognition of historic contributions to the advancement of the sciences, business, the arts and myriad other fields. The University comprises 25 institutions: 11 senior colleges, seven community colleges, William E. Macaulay Honors College at CUNY, CUNY Graduate Center, Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, CUNY School of Law, CUNY School of Professional Studies and CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy. The University serves more than 275,000 degree-seeking students. CUNY offers online baccalaureate and master’s degrees through the School of Professional Studies.
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