Hungry students: UNC-Chapel Hill struggles with food insecurity

Video by Tierra Marsh

Story by Katie Rice

Photos by Brian Batista

Graphics by Sarah Sharpe

CHAPEL HILL — Jovan Baslious barely ate for a month.

This was not one of his regular fasts — as a Coptic Orthodox Christian, he goes vegan every Lent and Nativity — his hunger was out of necessity.

Jovan Baslious, a UNC student, sits at Lenoir Dining Hall, at UNC’s campus in Chapel Hill.

Baslious’ family was going through financial hardship, and Baslious had not signed up for a meal plan through UNC-Chapel Hill’s Carolina Dining Services. He also did not ask for money to help pay for food.

Instead, he walked up and down Franklin Street, Chapel Hill’s main dining and shopping street, in a suit, asking for jobs so he could afford to eat.

He ate six meals in 30 days in November 2015. It would have been seven, but his attempt at cooking chicken stir-fry set off the fire alarms in his residence hall.

“It turns out being really, really hungry makes you not think straight,” Baslious said.

His is a dramatic example, and he is not alone in having been food insecure during his time at the university. A 2016 study found 22.3 percent of students on UNC’s campus were food insecure.

An invisible issue

“Food insecurity is basically when you don’t have the ability to know that you’re going to be able to put food on the table on a regular basis,” said Maureen Berner, co-author of the study and a professor of public administration and government at the School of Government at UNC.

Berner surveyed 5,000 students at UNC and found that about 25 percent of undergraduate students were food insecure. Food insecurity increased with students’ progression toward their degree.

“The issues facing students are really unique because they’re on a campus, and so their options are limited,” she said. “But because they’re students, they’re often balancing where to put their money and their time.”

A hamburguer lies forgotten in the rain on the Pit at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, on April 23rd, 2018.

The study found American Indian, Hispanic and African American students were more likely to be food insecure than white students.

Berner’s study reported the biggest barrier to food insecurity for students was financial, but the second-biggest was access. The issue of access has two parts, Berner said, affordability and physical access to healthy food.

“We may have access to apples and baking supplies or be close to a grocery store,” she said, “but if we have nowhere that we can actually cook a meal that’s affordable, then we’re in no better situation than if that grocery store wasn’t there in the first place.”

Hunger issues aren’t well known because people suffering from it can be ashamed and hesitant to reach out for help.

“Now that studies are actually being done with students, we see that it’s far more common than anybody had thought,” Berner said.

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When students are hungry, they cannot pay attention. Berner’s survey shows that hunger affects students academically, and stress from trying to make ends meet “flows into the classroom.” Hungry students often miss more classes.

“I feel it is not meeting the mission of the university when one in five of our students are in a situation where they’re having to skip meals or do other things that would indicate that they’re food insecure,” she said.

An informal survey conducted for this article of 60 UNC undergraduate and graduate students found that nearly 12 percent of students felt they often could not afford to eat balanced meals. Almost 32 percent of students surveyed cut the size of their meals or skipped meals because they didn’t have enough money.

Thirty-one students identified other barriers to food, beyond financial. The biggest barrier students identified was finding time to prepare and cook food, followed closely by the barrier of accessing food due to the distance of grocery stores from campus. A few students expressed that there is a lack of healthy food options on campus.

One student, who requested to remain anonymous, said that meal plans on campus were unaffordable, but the university pushes students to get the meal plans because they profit from it.

“I really think the university could be doing more to really provide more resources for students,” he said.

The student, a first-year, said that although students are required to live on-campus during their first year, residence halls are unequipped for students to store food and do their own cooking, including his own.

“There’s no fridge,” he said. “It’s just like an old stove, an oven and a microwave, that’s it. You don’t really have the options.”

A student-led food pantry on campus is trying to change the conversation about hunger and food insecurity on UNC’s campus. UNC students who do not have access to buy food can visit Carolina Cupboard, located in the basement of Avery Residence Hall, and receive enough food to last two weeks without question or judgment.

Carolina Cupboard is open to all students, faculty and staff at UNC via OneCard. There is no screening process to use the Cupboard; instead, it operates on an Honor Code system with an open-door policy.

“If you know of the pantry, and you’ve taken the time to come to the pantry, we’re going to assume that you are in need, and we’re going to serve you,” said Jashawnna Gladney, co-founder and former chair of Carolina Cupboard.

The Carolina Cupboard, at UNC’s Avery Residence Hall, serves many students that deal with hunger.

Gladney and her brother Roderick founded Carolina Cupboard in October 2014. It was one of the first college food pantries in North Carolina, she said.

Since its founding, Carolina Cupboard has continued to break barriers. It has resources to store perishable foods, and it is one of the only college food pantries located in a residence hall, making it more accessible to students on- and off-campus via local bus routes.

As of May 2017, the U.S Department of Agriculture still considered Chapel Hill a food desert, or an area without sources of affordable and nutritious food. Grocery stores are located too far for people with limited finances or transportation access to reach, Gladney said.

To protect students’ anonymity, the pantry keeps demographic information for recipients anonymous, and gives them food in nondescript grocery bags, said Rachel Korf, operations ambassador for Carolina Cupboard.

In the 2017-2018 school year, Carolina Cupboard has served 65 visitors and received 6,229 donated items so far, according to Caitlyn Wallace, data analyzer for Carolina Cupboard.

The Carolina Cupboard at UNC’s Avery Residence Hall.

Many of the donated items come from food drives hosted by various organizations around campus, Gladney said.

“That’s something that we do take a lot of pride in: Tar Heels fighting hunger, one Tar Heel at a time,” she said.

Combating a stigma

For students like Baslious, who did not know about Carolina Cupboard when he went hungry, food insecurity can be a source of shame, and it can be hard to reach out for assistance. Baslious admitted he was too proud to ask friends for help when he was struggling, but said he would have used campus resources like the Carolina Cupboard had he known about them at the time.

Baslious’ trouble accessing food only lasted a month, after which he found a job and started working part-time. He has since moved off-campus, where he has access to his car. These changes have allowed him to afford food and have a reliable place to store and cook it. Now, his main problems are finding time to cook and learning cooking skills.

“When you can go grocery shopping and fend for yourself, it’s not too difficult,” he said.

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