Invisible Need: What I Learned Working at a Food Pantry on My College Campus

When I started college, I was fortunate enough to attend an elite private institution, and it never occurred to me that food insecurity was an issue. However, when I began my position as a Service Ambassador that fall, I was confused by my assigned place of service—a food pantry right on campus. Who was it meant to serve?

The answer fundamentally changed how I thought about food insecurity. Each shift revealed students silently struggling: the freshman carefully calculating whether to buy textbooks or groceries, the international student whose meal plan didn’t cover breaks, the graduate student making $20 last two weeks for food. These weren’t isolated cases but part of a national crisis hiding in plain sight.

As someone who has been in the highly privileged position of never experiencing food insecurity myself, I had made an assumption. I knew it was a severe and pervasive issue just outside our classrooms, on the streets of New York, but I had failed to understand that it was also an issue among my peers.

A groundbreaking 2018 study from Temple University, which surveyed 66 colleges, found that 36% of students face food insecurity (Dewey, 2018). At elite private universities like mine, the problem remains particularly invisible—students often feel too ashamed to seek help at institutions where privilege is assumed. The systemic roots of this issue run deep. The National Center for Education Statistics reports that tuition and housing costs have risen 50% nationally in just 20 years, while financial aid packages frequently fail to account for basic living expenses (Dewey, 2018).

Universities must stop treating food security as charity and start treating it as fundamental to education—integrating pantries into student centers as visibly as libraries and health clinics, screening for need during orientation, and reforming financial aid to reflect the actual costs of living. As a student at an institution with a billion-dollar endowment, we must hold our schools accountable; no student should choose between sustaining themselves and learning.

References:

Dewey, Caitlin. “The Hidden Crisis on College Campuses: 36 Percent of Students Don’t Have Enough to Eat.” Washington Post, 3 Apr. 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/04/03/the-hidden-crisis-on-college-campuses-36-percent-of-students-dont-have-enough-to-eat/. Accessed 27 Mar. 2025.

Pandya, Sophia, NY