Pittsburgh community college students and staff speak on hunger
By
Evan Winters
4 February 2017
Food banks, also known as food pantries, are rapidly proliferating on college and university campuses across the US. The College and University Food Bank Alliance counts 434 member food banks at colleges and universities nationwide, an increase of 23 in the span of just two months.
There are food banks at prestigious public universities, including University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, University of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of Pittsburgh, University of Oregon, Georgia Tech, and University of Minnesota. What’s more, there are food banks at selective private universities, including Cornell University, Georgetown University, University of Southern California, and George Washington University, all of which charge roughly $50,000 per year in tuition alone, with total annual cost of attendance at roughly $70,000 per year.
2016 brought additional hardship to part-time students along with unemployed workers in Pennsylvania and 21 other states that implemented changes to eligibility rules for the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), otherwise known as food stamps. The federal government cut SNAP benefits for an estimated 500,000 to one million childless adults between 18 and 49 who have been unemployed for over three months. Students enrolled in higher education more than half their time are generally ineligible for SNAP unless they work at least 20 hours a week, care for dependent children, or meet a handful of other exemptions. The change in the work requirement does apply for part-time students.
In response to high unemployment levels in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, many states were allowed to temporarily waive requirements…