I'm thrilled that I will be attending the #RealCollege convening at the end of September in Philadelphia. I am very excited to go and learn what others are doing and share the work happening in my division and college. This trip seems incredibly timely after a story I heard recently on campus in a program we lead for at-risk youth learning work readiness skills and earning high school credentials and college credit. We know that our students in this program have immense barriers to success and are often taking heroic steps to try and improve their economic reality and the future story for themselves and their families. In that environment, it's no surprise that staff regularly share food with students and recently one staff member brought in pizza for a day of celebration. All of this seems very standard, until I tell you about the response of one young man. He declined the food and when pressed to say why, he responded that he didn't want his body and brain to get used to eating...
I've been doing this work a long time and have heard stories of students sleeping in cars to save commuting costs, couch surfing to save on rent, and endless other stories of barriers to success, but this one floored me. This young man lived in a food insecure world and was so insightful that he was afraid if he took part in a random celebration, it would make his life worse, not better. Besides making me sad (I can't stop thinking about it), I am struck by the resilience and discipline of this young man. What a decision to have to make... I read a great article in The Atlantic a while ago (find it here The Amarillo Story) about the folks at Amarillo College. There was much wisdom in it, but the line that stuck with me was President Russell Lowery-Hart's quote "it isn't enough, we're not doing enough, we have to do more." I've mentioned Amarillo as one of my inspirations before, but the connection between that quote and the young man afraid to eat has stayed with me for the two weeks since I heard his story. So, what can we do?
Identifying what stops students from succeeding isn't complicated from my point of view. We in higher education seem to have an inclination to make the routine look impossible, but it's fairly simple to understand that hunger impedes learning, as does unstable housing, poorly running vehicles, family pressures and the other myriad effects of poverty. Students have barriers unrelated to poverty (at least not directly related), but we have some ability to do things directly about poverty. We can advocate for structural change that makes full bellies a basic human right such as free lunch programs modeled on successful K-12 efforts. We can try innovative food scholarships like this: Could free food help college students. We can do smaller efforts, like food pantries on campuses, the proliferation of which is both inspiring and indicative of crisis we do not fully acknowledge yet. I'm proud to say our campus has a student led food pantry, but it's just a band aid on a bigger problem in my opinion.
As my division strives to become more poverty informed and actively combat poverty's attack on our students' learning, we are going to fight at the macro and micro level. We have invited our local workforce agency into an office in our area to be directly available to work with students eligible for Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) funding as well as the FoodShare Employment and Training (FSET) program. The vast majority of our students are eligible for some help, but often don't know it or avoid it due to stigma. We will invite in our local Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provider as well. You cannot learn effectively if you are hungry. But we must do more...
Hunger is not a problem solved by outsourcing or referrals alone. Our staff must grow more knowledgeable about resources and comfortable discussing, sharing and facilitating access to them. I recently read a slide from a speech by Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab and I think it said something like "You don't have to be a social worker, but you better know one." These things are not complicated, they are just hard. And tomorrow, I will go to Wal-Mart and bulk purchase granola bars and trail mix and they will sit in my lobby for anyone who wants them and when they are gone, I will buy more. That is my personal commitment. Let me tell you why.
When my parents divorced in the mid 70's, my mother moved us into a house that didn't have plumbing. The landlord gave her a choice between installing a shower or a toilet. She chose shower, so we had an outhouse for two formative years of my childhood. Mom was determined not to stay in that situation and she worked hard and went back to school. But we had help. I remember what food stamps looked like and I remember what government cheese tastes like. Those things helped, and they worked, and my mother lifted us from poverty as the years went by. We must normalize help and de-stigmatize it. Almost everyone needs help at some point. Success that comes with help is called...success. No one should have to train their body not to eat. Let's get to work!
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