College is hard; it can be even harder when you can’t afford food, much less nutritional food that would help you stay focused and energized. That’s why some West Virginia college students are advocating for a bill that aims to eradicate campus hunger by making healthier food options available.
“College can be difficult in terms of finances,” said Joanna Switala, a WVU graduate student in public administration. “During my six years here at WVU, I’ve utilized the food pantry.”
Switala testified before lawmakers earlier this month about her own experience with food insecurity as she urged them to pass SB 292.
Hunger is a problem around the country. One in three college students nationwide experience hunger, according to a 2023 report by Temple University, and there are significant racial and ethnic disparities. In West Virginia, 45% of WVU students and 28% of Marshall University students reported experiencing some food insecurity last fall, according to an independent study presented to lawmakers.
SB 292, the Hunger-Free Campus Act, aims to encourage campuses to address student hunger by providing more funding for food options, helping students apply for food assistance programs, and raising awareness of food insecurity.
The bill’s lead sponsor, Sen. Amy Grady, R-Mason, said that before students from WVU, Marshall and Concord universities approached her last year she hadn’t thought about food insecurity on college campuses.
“Many of our colleges and universities have created and established their own programs, food pantries, or food sharing resources on campus, but the need is still very great,” Grady said. “This bill allows for a fund to be set up for grants to help with food insecurity on our campuses.”
The amount of each grant allotted per university will be determined by the Chancellor of the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission, who will also submit a report to the governor and the Legislature on how the funds have been used.
While Grady introduced the same bill last year, it never made it out of the Senate. This year, the Senate approved the bill, 32-2, and the measure is currently moving through the House.
Myths behind the college student diet
In the Senate, one of the lawmakers who voted against the bill was Sen. Michael Azinger, R-Wood. He was also a vocal opponent when the bill was up before the Senate Education Committee, saying the college experience is meant to have hardships — including experiencing hunger — to build character.
“People go to college, sometimes you don’t have food, sometimes you get hungry, it’s life,” Azinger said. “It builds character, nobody starves to death.”
While they may not “starve to death,” studies have shown that insufficient access to healthy food can lead to students experiencing poor health and having lower chances of graduating from college.
“There’s a myth, a story about how, when you’re in college, you’re supposed to starve and it’s okay for young people to just be eating ramen,” said Liz Brunello, the West Virginia youth program coordinator at the Appalachian Center for Equality.
Brunello works on several projects across the state that focus on communities, including college students, directly impacted by food insecurity.
She said the current food pantry programs at colleges and universities are limited, and tight budgets mean they don’t always cater to dietary restrictions based on cultural, religious or personal beliefs.
“They don’t have staple food items in stock regularly, and they’re really running on donations, and just a university budget” Brunello said. “So they’d be really impacted by all the cuts that are coming regularly.”
Switala, who testified that at times she has had two Rice Krispies treats for dinner, said that breaking the stigma of the college student diet is hard, but not as hard as not being able to eat.
“Stigmas are uncomfortable, but I would have to argue that being hungry is just as uncomfortable.” Switala said to lawmakers.
“It’s difficult when it’s expected for us to eat the same things that folks ate 15, 20 years ago when they were in college, even though we’re learning that these types of food are not nutritious and not healthy for you to be eating,” she said later.
Foods high in calories but low in nutritional value like pizza, burgers, ramen noodles, and frozen burritos are some of the “expected” staples of a college student diet. If the bill is signed into law, it will require schools seeking the “hunger-free campus” designation to, among other things, help students sign up for food assistance like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and offer healthy foods for them to buy with the benefits at campus stores.
Marshall University student body president Walker Tatum has been lobbying lawmakers to pass the Hunger-Free Campus Act and presented research on student hunger to lawmakers this month.
During the process of collecting the data on Marshall, Tatum spoke to the West Virginia Department of Education and found that the help that is available to help kids K-12 access nutritional food are lacking once students make it to college.
“Once students made it to campus and made it to college, the need was still there,” Tatum said. “But there was a lack of resources.”
That includes food assistance like the SNAP, which according to federal guidelines, is only available for full time students if they meet an exemption.
“Many students are unable to be eligible for those benefits if they are full-time students,” Tatum said. “If the student has a work study on campus, they are eligible for SNAP, but that is a small percentage and our international students are not eligible for work study, so they are unable to participate in the SNAP benefits.”
Although the bill would make applying for SNAP easier, by ensuring there is someone on campus to assist with applying for the benefits, it doesn’t change SNAP eligibility for students.