About two or three students pass through each week, sifting through the shelves lined with modest staples such as dry macaroni, boxed cereals and rice.

The shelves are situated in a converted office that serves as a food pantry, located just off an easily missed corner on the ground level of Hendricks Chapel. Ginny Yerdon, an administrative assistant special events coordinator in Hendricks, tends to the space, assisting students and listening as they offer their stories. One told of how he lost 10 pounds after subsisting on a diet of dry oatmeal; others spoke of how they spent their food money for rent.

“If you’re trying to make ends meet, you’re an independent student and you don’t have support and maybe you’ve worked a couple of different jobs and tuition money goes up and rent goes up and everything’s on the up, income doesn’t always match that,” Yerdon said.

Though campus hunger is difficult to measure and quantify, its prevalence at Syracuse University is unquestioned by some students and campus officials including Yerdon. She began organizing the food pantry during the summer after hearing anecdotes from students who found it difficult to afford food and groceries. After its first full semester in operation, Yerdon envisions more growth for the pantry in the spring — students have approached her with ideas for sharing meal recipes made from ingredients stocked in the food pantry, for example.

Hendricks has long been a haven for students who have fallen on hard luck, a concept embodied in the chapel’s Benevolence Fund. The fund, established by Dean William Powers, allots approximately $20,000 each academic year to assist students in crisis — those who seek help paying for books, rent or any unanticipated expenses, for example. That amount is split between the fall and spring semesters and further subdivided into $5,000 sums to be used for loans and grants. On average, the fund usually assists about 100 students each year, but more students have expressed need in past months, explained Hendricks Dean Tiffany Steinwert. 

“We have already spent through what we normally allocate for a semester. We spent through that in October,” Steinwert said.

This semester, Steinwert has noticed a “huge increase” in the number of students seeking assistance. Grant money, which comes in small funds and does not need to be repaid, has dried up for the fall. Bridge loans — small loans under $500 that help students pay for things like medical expenses, security deposits on apartments or unanticipated expenses— is a revolving fund that recoups money once students repay the sum lent to them. 

“What monies that we do have has not been sufficient with student need that we have,” Steinwert said. “We still have money left, it just means it’s getting less and less for the spring and we always have a huge rush at the end of spring as people are trying to graduate, and have bills to pay.”

Students seeking food assistance often share a familiar story: They’ve moved off-campus to curb the expense of a meal plan required for on-campus living, Steinwert said. But when encountered with the difficulty of juggling tuition, rent and book expenses, money becomes sparse and food is often the first cost to be cut.

“For students who live off campus, food security is pervasive, I would say. You’re a college student living in a university town, you’re paying much higher rent than anyone else,” Steinwert said. “You’re paying a higher percentage of what very little money you have just to have a roof over your head.”

But sometimes, when food is the concern, loans and grants aren’t always the best solution — that’s where the food pantry comes in, Steinwert said. The pantry, which is dependent on donations, has been sustained this year largely by donations from a holiday concert in 2012. 

Throughout the semester, the food pantry has collaborated with other offices within the university, including the Office of Financial Aid and Scholarship Programs and the Division of Enrollment Management, which conducted a small canned food drive in November. 

Don Saleh, vice president for enrollment management, said it’s difficult to quantify or gauge how pervasive the issue of campus hunger is, but he has fielded requests from students seeking to reduce their meal plans in order to save.

When an undergraduate student expresses financial need, Saleh said, the office does “all we can to help them,” from money management counseling to providing financial aid such as grants.

“It is a concern. It is the kind of problem we’re working on, to provide help on an individual basis,” Saleh said. “Any students at all who are going hungry, it’s a concern.”

The 14-meal plan, the least expensive option available to North Campus and Skyhall freshman residents, costs $3,310 each semester, according to the Office of Housing, Meal Plan and I.D. Card Services website. The allure of saving on food expenses was a major factor for Lynde Folsom, a senior neuroscience and philosophy major, when she decided to move off North Campus.

Even with the cost-saving move, Folsom has found herself in financial binds. When paperwork for a student loan stalled early this semester, she became resourceful, relying on meals from her SU Food Services job, weekly bread handouts in Hendricks and leftover butter and pasta from the summer to tide her over. It’s not the first time Folsom has become crafty to cut costs: She’s “figured out” how to avoid courses that require costly textbooks and enroll in those that predominantly use PDFs.

“We can make it work but it’s how can we make it not a concern,” said Folsom, who resigned as the Student Association’s Judicial Review Board chairwoman before the fall semester. She initially introduced the concept of creating a campaign to address hunger at a SA meeting in the spring, but the idea never gained traction, she said. 

Folsom said campus hunger is often overlooked at SU, a school that is perceived as affluent. But that perception, she reasoned, shouldn’t cloud the very real issue of hunger some students face.

“It’s hard to imagine what it’s like to wonder whether you can afford to eat tomorrow. I think that many students don’t know what that feeling is like, so they have a hard time relating to the students that have,” Folsom said. “The students that have don’t want to admit that on such an affluent campus that that’s the kind of experiences they have.”

For Folsom, it’s a matter of meeting a basic human necessity.

“I feel like in some ways our first priority should be the health of our students,” she said. “How can we possibly expect any of our students to perform at their best, or a fraction of their best, if they can’t stop thinking about if they’re going to eat after class?”

Published on December 5, 2013 at 3:20 am

Contact Debbie: dbtruong@syr.edu | @debbietruong