“I can still remember the sound of the squeaky wheels, like from a laundry cart or those carts that everyone in New York knows we use to transport stuff, as one of our students pushed a full cart of groceries down our hall. That was our first food donation,” says Suzette Ramsundar, Director of Campus Life at Lehman College. Suzette was teaching a leadership class in 2017 when her students thought up the Lehman Food Pantry as a project and then advocated in the administration to establish it.
“Before we had standardized purchasing food, it was a single mom, who knew what it was like to be hungry, among other students, who provided a lot of the food donations to the pantry,” recalls Suzette, “We really have the best students here, and a very strong culture of care. If you ever head down to our pantry, you’ll always find a student working there.” Since it opened, the pantry has served 150,000+ meals.
The pantry is available to all students and provides both online and in-person services. For in person services, both non-perishable food and fresh food are available for pick up. Students are able to make an appointment to pick up their food to reduce wait time common for many at food pantries. For online services, Lehman students are sent a gift card digitally that can be spent at a local grocery store, offering even more choice and autonomy.
While the pantry currently serves about 150 students weekly, Suzette knows that there is a great need on campus not reflected in that number. Of the 14,000 students, approximately 45% are food insecure. Within the last year, 87% of students using the panty worried about their food running out. 36% of students using the pantry reported that they had not eaten for an entire day at least once during the past year.
According to a survey conducted by the Hope Center for College, nearly 6/10 students at community colleges endure basic needs insecurity, including, housing, healthcare, transportation, and food. Before the pandemic, 60% of Lehman’s pantry users earned less than $30,000. Now, 81% of users earn less than $30,000.
David Charcape, the Assistant Director for the Office of Campus Life at Lehman College, worries about funding for the pantry. “If there is even a 10% increase in using our services, the pantry couldn’t handle it. We’d run out of food,” says David, who works with Suzette handling many back end needs of the pantry, such as reporting and ordering. While unfortunate, he credits the pandemic for bringing in more donations to the pantry, helping it to survive. Since campus has re-opened, pantry usage has increased 40%. “Our current budget is unsustainable,” he says.
While David and Suzette recognize the need for the food pantry, they both agree that the rising food insecurity is a symptom of a much larger problem. David hopes that the government will take a bigger role in solving some of the issues he witnesses in the Bronx, such as the food apartheid.“It’s a food swamp,” says David. He hopes that they will provide more economic incentives for businesses to provide healthier food choices and that public education includes more on healthy eating, not just for students but parents as well.
Suzette hopes that the government will advocate for meal plans as part of a student’s financial aid package or fund free school meals, similar to universal meals offered in K-12 schools. Both David and Suzette agree that the needs of commuter school students in particular are often forgotten. “That’s why we enjoy our relationship with Corbin Hill Food Project – They take an advocacy approach to providing fresh food,” says Suzette.
Food insecurity presents an enormous challenge for students’ success in school. According to the CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute, students who were hungry ‘often or sometimes’ in the previous 12 months were twice as likely to fail out of a program as students who did not experience hunger. “We can’t address their critical thinking if they are food insecure,” says Suzette, referencing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
“It’s a band-aid approach,” says Suzette, “a bag of groceries can’t solve food insecurity. But we’re doing what we can.”
Lehman College Food Pantry Flyer
