By Kmiecik Sarah

The Source as a Resource

Many campuses face food insecurity. Food insecurity is not having access to sufficient nutritious food, and it is something that affects people of all age ranges.

Grace Tatter’s 2018 article “Food Insecurity on College Campuses” points out that food insecurity is a pervasive problem in all regions, and all types of colleges, even the most elite.  Since many students can come across and face food insecurity, and the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor has taken notice and plans to help prevent students from going hungry. The way they have worked to solve this is through The Source.

In the fall of 2017, Dr. Terry Fox, a professor for the McLane College of Business who teaches business computer information systems, talked to his colleague at Baylor University where they had just opened up a food pantry for their students. Though the thought had never occurred to him before, this prompted him to go out and do some research.

“Nationwide, 40% of college students are food insecure,” Dr. Fox said. “This was a statistic that shocked me, so I did a survey in the spring of 2018 and got several responses from all grades. More than 40% of the undergraduates at the time had been food insecure in the past year. I was not expecting this because of the tuition it takes to go here that people would be struggling with this issue. After talking with Dr. Skaggs, working with him in the summer of 2018, and during fall of 2019, we made The Source a reality,” he said.

The Source is one of the many solutions that UMHB has showcased to help its students lower the percentage of students who face food insecurity. UMHB does so many of the potential solutions mentioned in “Colleges fight to end food insecurity; 9 potential solutions” by Chris Burt in 2021 in University Business and District Administration magazines. One of which is partnering with the community to help better the lives of the citizens of Belton, as well as the students at UMHB.

The Source has done is partner with Helping Hands, which is a food pantry in the community of Belton. Alicia Jallah executive director of Helping Hands Ministry, feels that it is important it is to help those who are food insecure.

“Helping Hands Ministry cultivates an environment in which individuals and families are empowered to work out of systemic poverty and toward wholeness, through ministries of relief, development, and advocacy,” Jallah said. “We have partnered with the source to help our community and our university tackle food insecurity and poverty.”

The Source is funded by Sodexo, which a company that provides food and caters to universities, including here at UMHB. The companhy had its first “Share a Swipe” event in January of 2019. With this event, a student who is on a meal plan can choose to donate one swipe from their plan and Sodexo will match the value of that swipe and donate it to funding the pantry. For this first event, the Sodexo employees collected around 1,000 swipes and bought food to completely stock the pantry. Not only does the pantry provide food, but it also provides personal hygiene products such as shampoo and conditioner, deodorant, and razors. There is also a plethora of canned food, noodles, cereal, and pastas. Zoey Holder, a junior psychology major, stressed that more people need to know about The Source.

“At first, I did not know about The Source, and I did not find out about it until someone told me about it my freshman year,” Holder said. “Since then, I have used it as a way to help people who are food insecure. I have heard many accounts of students that have only had a few things to eat that day because they cannot afford any more than that. This is something that struck me as a real and detrimental problem. People need to know about The Source and how it can lower food insecurity on our campus,” she said.

Not only can UMHB use The Source to end food insecurity, but they can also use other ways to help decrease food waste as well. If food is nearing its “best by” date, that food is donated to Helping Hands Ministry. There is a comparative difference between best by and expired food, and attention to this helps eliminate food waste.

For the university’s freshman students, there is the dining hall in Bawcom. This follows the routine of any dining hall, with cafeteria trays, a salad bar, and different options of food. Most people stack their trays full of food options, not knowing if they will finish their food or not. This is helpful for those who are lacking in food supply, but does not help with food waste. Most of the time, people will not complete the meal made on their cafeteria trays. Rutgers University in New Jersey eliminated cafeteria trays and saw great results.

“Cafeteria Trays Dropped from Dining Halls at Rutgers to Reduce Waste” by Andrea Alexander points out that in the first ten weeks of eliminating trays on their campus in three of their four dining halls, Rutgers saved $300,000 in food costs, and an addiontal 20 % reduction in the amount food that students threw out after eating. This is something that UMHB could also consider adopting to prevent money being wasted and save money.