Students at Utah State University will be seeing a new fee added to their accounts starting in the fall. But don’t worry! It's only $3.
A study conducted by USU’s Transforming Communities Institute last year found that more than half of students reported low or very low food security, with many saying they had trouble accessing proteins specifically. More than half of students also said that hunger both sometimes or often made it hard for them to stay focused in class.
In response to this issue, USU students were given the opportunity in March to vote on whether or not they wanted a $3 fee added to their tuition to help fund the Student Nutrition Access Center, often referred to as SNAC.
Janna Cook, the student director for the food pantry, explained the new funding would go a long way in allowing SNAC to provide students with more variety — such as gluten-free bread, dairy-free milk, and more fruits and vegetables.
“We've done our absolute best to leverage on-campus resources, grant funding, and community resources to get food for students, and to expand the options that are available at SNAC," Cook said. "But it just has reached a point where, in order to grow, the biggest thing that we needed was funding.”
She explained that SNAC is expecting a budget increase of about $100,000 from the new student fee, although the exact number is hard to pin down before knowing what enrollment numbers will look like.
“It is an additional cost to students," Cook acknowledged, "but by visiting SNAC, even one time, they can easily make that fee up. And we're hoping that more students will utilize SNAC and be comfortable coming to SNAC, because we don't want anyone to go hungry.”
And based on the study last year, a good portion of students are still going without enough food. Out of the 60% of students who reported food insecurity, 40% of them also reported not visiting SNAC — meaning only one in three hungry students are taking advantage of the free food available to them. Cook says she hopes the expanded resources will attract more visitors.
“We're hoping [this] will increase SNAC usage," she said. "That is part of the goal — being able to reach those 40% of students that statistically need SNAC as a resource and aren't using it.”
