Faculty and staff talk at SUNY Schenectady.
What they kept hearing from each other was that their students were hungry.
"We know hungry students can't focus. They can't function," said Robyn King, the college's director of Wellness and Support Services.
Some professors and faculty members started keeping granola bars in their desks and, one even kept a basket of food for students who needed it. But they knew it wasn't enough. So in early 2017, King and a few others got together to start a campus food pantry. That was a year before it became mandatory for all SUNY and CUNY colleges to have a pantry program.
Within the first three months, it outgrew its 80-square-foot space and was moved to a 400-square-foot space in Elston Hall. It's outgrowing that too.
Four days a week, students and college employees can be found picking up orders they placed online, via PantrySOFT. One of three student employees pulls together each order, grabbing cereal, coffee, cleaning products and cans of beans off the pantry shelves and placing them in bins. Two sizable fridges and a freezer also offer meat and frozen fruits and vegetables.
When the Gazette visited last week, Latasha Rivera, one of the student employees, was at the pantry's desk, getting ready for the afternoon's pick-ups.
"I used to visit the pantry," said Rivera, who has worked at the pantry for the last year and a half and is set to graduate next year, with plans to study political science at SUNY Potsdam. She also volunteers with Schenectady Street Soldiers.
The work she does at the food pantry goes well beyond fulfilling orders.
Life & Arts Niskayuna High library book returned - 63 years later Indiana Nash
"A lot of times people ask you questions that are not necessarily pantry related, but resource related. So it's always nice to be able to give that type of support to people," Rivera said. "I've been in bad situations and I'm a full-time student, so things aren't as easy as people think they are."
She's passionate about passing on resources that have helped her through college.
"It's definitely something to be able to help people and give them advice," Rivera said.
Food insecurity is on the rise nationally. In a recent report from Trellis Strategies, a nonprofit research and consulting firm, 45% of 700,000 students surveyed reported food insecurity. At the same time, the number of food pantries in American colleges is on the rise too. As of 2022, there are more than 800 across the country, up from 88 in 2012.
A survey conducted in 2019 by SUNY found that 54% of community college students and 40% of students from State-operated campuses were sometimes unable to eat because they did not have money for food.
King has seen a noticeable increase in the number of students accessing the pantry at SUNY Schenectady. There's been a 49% increase in people who have used the pantry during the 2023-2024 academic year as compared to the year before, as well as a 57% increase in the number of household members that are fed.
"That indicates to me, just anecdotally, that these aren't single 18-year-olds. These are families. These are multi-generational families who are relying on what they get here," King said.
King was on the original SUNY Food Insecurity Task Force, which was formed during Governor Andrew Cuomo's administration following the "No Student Goes Hungry Program," which mandated that all 64 SUNY and CUNY schools had to have a food pantry as of December 2018.
The task force still meets to swap ideas because, as King noted, each campus pantry works a bit differently.
At Empire State University in Saratoga Springs there isn't a physical food pantry but a virtual one.
"Because we are a fully online school, we had to get a little creative and a little innovative," said Libby Tsibulsky, the director of Health and Wellness Programs at the university. "Our students, even though we're not a brick-and-mortar institution, face the same difficulties as students at any other place across the state."
Launched in January, the program enables students to create a cart on the website of a grocery store chain near them and have the order delivered to their home. The pantry, which students can access once per term, provides food not only for the students but also for their family members.
"In our population, we tend to have nontraditional students, whose family comes first and how can you focus on your studies and getting a degree if you're worried about your children eating or where your next meal is going to come from?" Tsibulsky said.
News Photos: Schenectady High math teacher wins district Teacher of the Year By Stan Hudy
In its first year, the virtual pantry has served more than 448 people, including 149 students and their families and the university has donated $34,692 in groceries.
While there are certain products that students aren't allowed to purchase (including alcohol and nicotine), for the most part, the system allows students to choose what foods and from which brands they'd like.
"I think that that's what I am most proud of about the food pantry, is it allows for dignity and choice," Tsibulsky said. "I think it deters a lot of people from using a food pantry or a food bank to have to go in person and to feel like this is what you are allotted, where, in our system, it's confidential."
Students at Fulton-Montgomery Community College can visit the Raiders Relief Food Pantry at the Evans Library and shop the shelves, grabbing rice, pasta, canned goods and peanut butter. It's meant to be an emergency resource and students are asked to limit themselves to 10 items a week because it can be difficult to keep up with the demand.
"It is used heavily," said Robin Towne, the secretary for Student Affairs. "It's used more and more every semester and primarily we do that just so that we can spread the wealth so more people can receive needed items."
The pantry has moved several times since it started in 2018, growing with an increase in demand. It's staffed by five student employees and one volunteer and open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.
The college relies on donations and shops via the Regional Food Bank, which delivers food to the area twice a month. On off weeks, Towne noted they have to shop locally to supply the pantry.
"We can easily spend $500 to $800 per trip to stock the shelves and usually that quantity of food is diminished that week," Towne said. If students need more, employees direct them to other local pantries and resources.
Stocking the shelves each week at the University at Albany's Purple Pantry, located in the Campus Center, requires between $1,700 to $2,500 of food purchased from the Regional Food Bank. It's also supplied with products from local farmers thanks to a Nourish New York grant, which helps farms to sell surplus goods to emergency food providers.
Students and university employees can shop the shelves at the pantry once every 30 days, filling their bags with four days worth of food for themselves and those in their household. It's typically open 20 hours a week, staffed by student employees and volunteers.
The roots of the program go back nearly a decade ago, following national reports highlighting food insecurity in higher education.
"What we did was form a partnership with a local food pantry, and that was St. Vincent's pantry, which is affiliated with St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Albany," said Sally D'Alessandro, assistant dean of students.
News Education sets tune for Schenectady graduate Amos Prince's success By Ameara Ditsche
Students could place orders and volunteers would pick them up. It worked for a little while, but it eventually became apparent that students needed more. In 2018, the college surveyed 1,500 students and found that 26% of them lost weight during college without trying.
Years later, that statistic still brings D'Alessandro to tears.
"UAlbany has probably, I would venture to guess, certainly the neediest population of our university centers," D'Alessandro said. "We have 40% of our students getting Pell Grants."
With help from an Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU) grant, D'Alessandro helped establish the Purple Pantry and to create an endowment to ensure its sustainability.
The pantry has seen a stark rise in visits in recent years. In 2021, it saw 1,075. This year there were 3,885. In 2024 alone, the pantry offered 46,620 meals.
"If we can feed some students and keep their GPAs up and keep them in school and get them to graduation, that's a coup," D'Alessandro said.
Looking ahead
Just a few years ago, at SUNY Schenectady's commencement day, a graduating student approached King to thank her.
"She said, 'Because I could visit the food pantry three times every month, I didn't have to get a third part-time job,'" King remembered.
It was a gratifying moment in a career advocating for food justice.
"I have previous lived experience with poverty and hunger, and so I think that perspective [has] molded my work," King reflected.
The pantry at SUNY Schenectady is continuing to grow and this week, the college installed refrigerated and non-refrigerated lockers in Elston Hall to give students more flexibility as to when they can pick up their orders.
It's the first SUNY college to offer the Parcel Pending by Quadient lockers. When students place their orders through PantrySOFT, they'll get a barcode for the locker, which they'll scan to unlock it once the order is ready. Staff can also send out reminders if they've forgotten to pick up their order.
While the primary goal is to keep students - and their families - fed, King also aims to dispel an age-old notion.
"One of the things I'm trying to do is to educate people that the hungry college student isn't a rite of passage," King said. "It's a fact of life that we can do something about."
By the numbers:
448
People served by the Empire State University's virtual food pantry since January. That number includes 149 students and their family members.
49%
Increase in the number of people who accessed SUNY Schenectady's food pantry this academic year over last.
20%
Increase in visitors this fall semester over last at SUNY Schenectady's food pantry.
800
Unique visitors per month at the Fulton-Montgomery County Community College food pantry.
3,885
Visits to the Purple Pantry at the University at Albany this year.
More: Life & Arts Niskayuna High library book returned - 63 years later Indiana Nash News Photos: Schenectady High math teacher wins district Teacher of the Year By Stan Hudy News Education sets tune for Schenectady graduate Amos Prince's success By Ameara Ditsche