That’s the one my son had starting in his sophomore year (I think freshmen are required to take a more comprehensive meal plan). Honestly, I think some of his friends swiped him in for meals on weekends, at least sometimes, and he did work and was able to use that money to buy food. We’re not poor, but at the time, we just didn’t have extra. If he’d told us he was hungry, we would have found a way (asked my dad most likely) to send him money. He had a lot of wealthy friends-he was super social- who cared about him, and I think that was a big part of why he was fine.
My family had no income for some of the years our kids were in college. Husband had a stroke, I and one of our kids had serious health issues. I am not judging from above.
For our youngest we couldn’t afford college at all and she went to community college and worked for a few years- taking a few classes at a time. She is still working on it. I would rather that than she go hungry. The others went to highly selective schools where meals were covered by aid but extras weren’t, and for most of the time they had no stove or microwave. They worked, and they also took stuff from the dining hall to their rooms 
My problem is with the article, not the idea. Using Emerson and Tufts students as examples is problematic, for instance. These are expensive schools. Tufts has improved aid but still…and why not cover community colleges, where many low income students study, rather than elite schools where poor students are a minority?
I also think the article may overstate the frequency of the problem. Even if you do have a meal plan, and eat in the dining hall at 6, then stay up studying until 3 am, you will “go to bed hungry” if you don’t have a stash.
One of my kids had friends who did things like invite her to go to India on spring break. Geez. My kid didn’t dwell on it and had a sense of humor about it too.
I think a food pantry is great. But having worked in a large shelter for the homeless in a major city, for many years, I find it hard to read an article about hunger at elite expensive schools and see it as a tragedy.
Not a tragedy, but definitely a problem that’s easily overlooked, especially at elite schools where most of the kids come from upper middle class families.
I see this as very sad and another way that SES makes it harder for poorer kids to move ahead.
First Gen, working class city kid here. I haven’t read the article, but, this thread certainly takes me back. So far back that I had to use a CPI calculator to do the math because the dollar amounts no longer make sense in today’s terms. For instance, Mom faithfully sent me $20 a month for spending money (a crisp bill right in the envelope - we had such faith in the postal system back then!) and it had to last until the next “CARE package” (inside joke, for all the Boomers out there.) That translates to about $125 in today’s money. We were not full-ride by any means, so, when I voluntarily went off the meal plan sophomore year (against Mom’s advice, IIRC) it definitely saved some money. Did I go hungry? Technically, not. But, I look back at those pictures now and I’m barely recognizable - I was so painfully thin!
It’s a piece of journalism, not a comprehensive study of hunger at colleges. What makes it news is that it is unexpected.
Penn State isn’t elite, but it is expensive, and students started a food pantry that got a huge boost when parents started donating money to run it, and then a senior class gift went towards the upkeep. This was all reported in rosy tones and all I can think of is that PSU should be ashamed that students have to resort to feeding each other. Talk about normalizing, or allowing others to shoulder a burden …yikes. The meal plan has a base rate – a flat minimum covering operations, to which you add an amount related to number of meals. The result is that even if you eat once a day, your cost is still significant because of that base amount.
If you have no money, whether something costs $5 or $500, it’s still too much. We nickel and dime the working poor with no real understanding of poverty obstacles. If we stopped worrying about someone getti something they don’t “deserve” we might be more effective against food insecurity.
The starving college student is a stereotype for a reason. I get that some are poor and have absolutely no money. I get that they might be hungry. I was a hungry student in the early 80s. Worked two jobs, went to school full-time, paid for school myself with some loans. Ate very little food, and sometimes water froze on the nightstand (Orono, ME) because I didn’t dare to run the heat because I could barely afford it. I had drive to get that degree, stopping because I was starving and cold never entered my mind. People do all kinds of very difficult things to reach a goal.
I couched surf-ed (in dorms) my senior year at Stanford and then lived in my car during my 5th year while finishing up a 2nd degree. I was on mostly full-ride, but that included loans and work. I wanted to do unpaid summer internships to help me get into grad school and during the year, I wanted to keep doing my sport which made it hard to work. Living in my car and skimping on meals felt like a reasonable trade. I wasn’t going to ask my mom for $. She didn’t have a dime. I felt bad enough that I wasn’t home working and helping buy her food and pay the utilities.
Going a little hungry every so often was not anything I would have thought twice about. I was eating so much more regularly at college than I ever had in high school. It’s been over 30 years and I still remember the ache of hunger in high school. College was nothing like that. If you were resourceful and willing to eat out of a trash can during breaks, there was always food to be had. I know that sounds terrible and gross, but really at the time, I didn’t think of it as a tragedy but rather as resourcefulness. I definitely didn’t feel sorry for myself. I was getting a great education and knew that the future was bright. btw at the time there is no possible way I would have let anyone know I was `homeless’ in college. I was very careful to keep it secret.
@liska21 your post about worse hunger in high school made me think of all of those children who get free lunch at public school and go without all summer long and every school break. That’s a big problem in many states. They are kids without the choices of adult college kids.
In my area, there are programs that provide free lunches during the summer and on weekends. It’s sad that the need exists, but I’m glad some of the need is being filled.
To respond to Post #2 and #14, I tried to locate an article I read a couple months ago. It took me a few try to find it, and here it is: For the poor in the Ivy League, a full ride isn’t always what they imagined
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/for-the-poor-in-the-ivy-league-a-full-ride-isnt-always-what-they-imagined/2016/05/16/5f89972a-114d-11e6-81b4-581a5c4c42df_story.html?utm_term=.50a0ecc1128f
Every student in our urban school district can get free breakfast, and of course many qualify for free or reduced lunch. There are summer lunch programs in the neighborhoods where there is the most need and anyone can eat at those not just students (parents, grandparents, siblings)
I think all school lunches (and breakfasts) should be free to all. They are children, feed them. Get rid of all the paperwork and qualifications and just feed the students.
^^ “I think all school lunches (and breakfasts) should be free to all. They are children, feed them. Get rid of all the paperwork and qualifications and just feed the students.”
School lunches do not appeal to the taste of every child. My own daughter thought having school lunches was a dream came true for having to eat Asian food at home and not going to McDonalds often enough growing up. Yet after having a few month in her elementary having school lunches, she started losing the interest. But the time she went to high school, she did not have a single school lunch for her four years. We donated her school lunch money left all the way from her middle school to the school when she graduate HS. I wonder if a free all school lunch program may turn out to be wasting food.
If you are hungry, you will eat it. My kids never ate a free breakfast at school either, but it was there for students who are really hungry.
In a country that can’t agree on how to deliver healthcare to the chronically ill, poor, or elderly ; it’s extraordinarily unlikely that we would increase the deficit in order to feed every child a free lunch. The logistics boggle the mind, let alone the politics and cost.
@liska21 and @NorthernMom61 , everything you said rings true. For someone who for so long thought he was “the only one”, this thread has been almost like therapy. But, it still comes back to the same point, which is that the subject was immediately easy for me to fathom.
The big advantage to this is that all the paperwork costs money and involves a lot of staff time. If you make the lunches and breakfasts available to all the students, you eliminate those costs. It might well cost LESS to offer free meals to all the students because the logistics are easier.
In our district any school where the free lunch percentage hits a certain point it is free for all. I think it is around 60. It is cheaper to do that.
There is no acceptable reason that a major university with $1 billion or more in their endowment can’t afford to provide decent food to a few of their poorest students. No reason at all.
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