“If anything, it’s just gotten worse,” David Silver, professor and faculty advisor to the USF food pantry, said.ighlighted the strain he observes on campus as more students are forced to make difficult financial choices and eat sporadically due to rising costs, decreasing safety nets and growing inequality.
Food insecurity has become a significant issue on college campuses nationwide. According to a national #RealCollege survey report, nearly 45% of college students struggle to obtain regular, nutritious meals, a trend that people claim has only intensified with inflation and rising housing costs.
Federal policy gaps exacerbate this problem. A U.S. government accountability office report estimates that in 2020, approximately 3.3 million college students potentially qualified for The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. SNAP is the primary federal program designed to combat hunger. Also known as CalFresh in California, it remains inaccessible and under-resourced. This crisis has intensified significantly due to recent federal actions, including the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and regulatory restrictions imposed by the Trump administration, which reduced SNAP funding by $186 billion.
In states like California, where the cost of living is the highest in the country, students face added challenges, making it difficult for them to afford rent and inflated grocery prices. “Life has gotten more expensive. San Francisco’s gotten more expensive. Income inequality has gotten worse,” Silver said. Students face daily dilemmas of choosing between meals, books, or transportation options, which in turn impact both their academic performance and overall well-being. “It affects their studies, their mental wellbeing, and their anxiety and depression,” he said.
USF’s own data helps better understand student needs. A survey conducted by Professor Brian Dowd-Uribe’s Global Food Security Course in 2018 found that, out of 134 USF undergraduates, 37.3% reported being food insecure. The class utilized a ten-question USDA survey instrument, a widely recognized tool for evaluating food insecurity. Questions like, “We worried whether our food would run out before we got money to buy more,” and “Was that often, sometimes, or never true for you in the last 12 months?” were asked of the group of students. The survey provided essential data that informed critical discussions regarding policy interventions and support services the university could offer to students facing food insecurity on campus.
Since 2018, the USF food pantry has grown into the university’s largest basic-needs initiative. Relocated from a basement closet to the Gleeson Library atrium to reduce stigma and increase visibility, the pantry operates on a biweekly distribution schedule, aiming to be inclusive, accessible and community-centered. Its goal is “to make sure that students have everything that they need to be successful, not just as students, but as people,” Hannah Ogden, USF’s Food Pantry & Basic Needs Coordinator, said. The food pantry is open to all USF students on any given distribution day, commonly drawing between 50 and 200 students for groceries and essentials.
Ogden explained the pantry’s mix of outreach and sourcing: “Non-perishables come from a 50-50 split between a grocery outlet, bargain market and Costco. And all of our produce comes from one of two places. Primarily, we get the produce from Star Route Farms. And then the university also has a chapter of the Food Recovery Network.” Student volunteers also pick up surplus from local farmers’ markets to add to the distributions, she said.
Star Route Farms is a certified organic farm that USF acquired in 2017, and has become one of the pantry’s primary sources of fresh produce. The food is purchased through a faculty grant obtained by Silver, which helps ensure that nutritious options are offered at every distribution and connects the pantry to local agriculture.
However, financial and logical constraints limit supply. According to Ogden, the pantry’s core budget has remained relatively unchanged since the last report in 2023, and the staff relies on grants and creative partnerships to supplement funds. “Our goal is just to get as much food into the hands of students as we can,” she said. The essentials are produce and nonperishables; bread is always available, but eggs depend on availability. Each distribution features a variety of items, including rice, pasta, canned food and seasonal produce, with some items limited due to demand frequently exceeding supply.
Students at the pantry experience those limits firsthand . “A lot of students try to take more than what’s allowed, and we have to monitor that,” Azmera Zeratsion, a junior nursing major and food pantry volunteer said. “It feels bad because why are we telling someone not to take food if they obviously need it?” She added that many first-year students lack refrigerators and cooking tools in their first-year residence halls, so even if fresh produce is available, not everyone can utilize it.
“If we are depending on a food pantry once every two weeks, a food pantry to eliminate food insecurity at USF, that’s a dream. It’s not gonna happen,” Silver said. Along with other community members, Silver advocates for a variety of measures, including increased emergency aid, institutionalized funding for basic-needs programs, better publicity for food surplus and initiatives to lower the cost of on-campus housing and food.
The impact of the pantry extends beyond just providing food. Each distribution is purposefully community-centered and frequently features live music, tabling from other organizations and food workshops to encourage students to attend without fear of stigma. “Coming to the pantry should be a cool experience,” Ogden said. Silver added that the stigma surrounding the need for food is “extremely real,” and that the goal is to create an “inviting, inclusive, diverse space where many of us are dealing with that stigma” together.
Addressing food insecurity will require more than temporary solutions. As Silver said, awareness is only the beginning: “That’s where change starts, but we need more than awareness to meet the scale of the problem.”
