l time. i'm your host journalism school director bob rucker. food insecurity is an important issue impacting colleges and campuses nationwide, with students going hungry. i was really hungry. i was really at this point it's like living off of like peanut butter sandwiches and ramen. overwhelmed by hunger. a san jose state student tells his story facing food insecurity, on this edition of equal time. [music] stress is one feeling a college student faces but hunger should be one of the least worries on any students mind. equal time correspondent rigo gomez begins our coverage

with a look at this unique problem. senior english major stephan perez spends hours each day in martin luther king jr. library. he studies. but one distraction is difficult to ignore. but i mean i'm spending time in the library and people bring food from home and i have no food to bring anyway. so i'm just sort of stuck there eating with whatever granola bars i have left or whatever. he's hungry and he's not alone. food insecurity is impacting college campuses. according to a 2015 csu report on displaced and food insecure students the study shows that california state universities are shedding light to make a difference on those students who face food insecurity. usually i can get by on my own, you know. just from what the savings i have and when my parents do do is they just ship me a box of food, sometimes, you know? perez left home two years ago to pursue college in a different city. but once he arrived here he found it difficult. thinking he was the only student who was routinely hungry.

it's really hard, you know, my friends here they want to know like hey let's hang out let's you know grab a drink or let's go out to dinner. and it's kind of hard to be like, oh i can't do that you know. perez finds it the most difficult during winter breaks waiting on his financial aid to have some sort of income. >> i could definitely remember this last break right at the end. and so i'm waiting for school to start still waiting for my aid. and (sigh) it was just that long like week, we're just waiting for it and i was really hungry. i was really at this point it's like living off of like peanut butter sandwiches and ramen. his mother martina ibarra is trying to help. >> as a mother very worried. i worry about him all the time. and he keeps in contact with me, so this way i just, you know -- i think that's his way of you know making -- letting me know he's doing okay. and today we came up to bring him some food because i knew he was getting a little short. according to the csu study 79% of students don't know about available services.

63% of staff and faculty lack awareness of the issue. and there's 54% of not having any services available on campus to help food insecure and displacement students. the numbers started ibarra. i think it's horrible because you know these kids they want to go to college and they go away from their homes, and their security, and their comfort zone and their parents provide for them. and when they want to go out on their own and they think it's a really good idea, and they're they're looking forward to it and you know planning their future. and they don't take into consideration that they have to pay for things, and it becomes a burden on them. ibarra now realizes that most students don't talk to their parents about what they're going through in school because they do not want to worry them. she says her son kept his food insecurity problem away from her until recently. >> all this time i was not knowing this. so it's very hard --

it hurts my heart it balls to just parents to ask questions to their children and spark a conversation about eating daily nutritional meals. when we come back we'll talk to perez's mother and get her thoughts on her son's situation [music] [music] welcome back. we heard perez's story on food insecurity but now we go further into the story and how the issue is impacting students on campus. rigo gomes continues our coverage. [tower rings]

on the san jose state campus, perez was able to find help from a friend to have access to food. and i know victor hernandez, he sort of, you know, pointed me in the right direction with the food shelfs. that i started realizing that like, oh i'm not the only one who's doing this. it actually is a big problem. hernandez is on the student hunger committee, which has set up shelves around campus. offering free food for anyone who needs it. the student hunger committee is the committee that put up all the food shelves around campus. so those food shelves, i've went to some of those. they have stuff like granola bars like cup noodles, cliff bars. basically non-perishable goods. hernandez says he became involved because he sees hunger as a problem and make sure that those students have easy access to these food shelves. they were trying to actively help them out. students still feel a lot of shame about doing it and we want to make sure that if they do go on this path

to get food from a food shelf that we don't give them any barriers. that we don't have any stuff that's make them rethink their that decision. because taking that first step is a hard step to take. san jose state sociology major ariana briones, is launching a campaign called hungry spartans. hungry spartans is we are advocating for a food pantry, a centralized food pantry. in the student health center because that is a place that is meant to provide wellness for all students. briones became involved in the food insecurity issue because it was facing her campus and her friends. and she found the statistics shocking. >> it's just really not a healthy lifestyle. it's just college students in order to succeed, we need like food for brain power. and for energy and for health. so we believe it's an important issue that is easily recognized because it's within our campus. it's not within the entire community. so we think it's very achievable to be able to have this food pantry and it's an issue that definitely needs to be solved.

san jose state alumna megan huey says that talking about hunger will raise awareness and get the campus the food pantry it needs. huey offers an alternative for students who want access to a more healthy green meal. >> you know, another resource that is probably underutilized is the a.s. garden, which is on 7th street across from joe west. and as long as you volunteer for an hour monday and friday between 1 and 5, you're more than welcome to take home as much free groceries as you need. many students are still not aware, so many of their classmates are hungry. but knowledge about the problem may result in action. i wish san jose state would come together as a community more, and raise awareness about this because i had no idea personally. that one in three people are affected by this and that's -- you know, now that i'm aware. maybe there's something i could do to help. when we come back we'll sit down with staff and faculty running the student hunger committee. searching for solutions to end hunger on the san jose state campus.

stay with us. [music] [music] welcome back to this edition of equal time. for today we're going to focus on food insecurities for college students. let's meet our guests. i'm ben faulter, i'm a chair of the behavioral intervention team on campus. and serve on our student hungry committee. my name is stephanie fabian, and i am the director of marketing and communications with spartan shops. and i am the marketing chair for the student hunger committee. my name is kristen wonder and i'm the sustainability coordinator for spartan shops. and the co-chair of the student hunger committee. hi my name is elizabeth agramont, i am the program assistant

for the food shelf program and work out of the cesar chavez community action center. i'm rigoberto gomez, the correspondent that's working on the food insecurity story. thank you very much all of you for being here today. you know we are going to talk about pantries are going to talk about a bunch of things and some of us may have never heard of this. but stephanie help us understand this concept of food insecurities. what are we talking about? with food insecurity a lot of people when they hear it they go what are you insecure about, food? and what it really means is when people cannot afford to eat and this can be for several reasons. it can be that are picking between living expenses and eating. maybe i have to pay rent today so i can't afford to eat. or for students it might be i had to pay my tuition today, so i cannot afford to buy dinner or breakfast or lunch. so elizabeth, are we talking about a small number of students that deal with this? >> well actually we're about one in three students. >> one in three? wow! so, approximately 11,000 students on campus facing this issue. we got that statistics based on a survey sent out and fall 2014.

>> so ben, how do we address this, when we know this is a problem? i mean i think it has to occur on a lot of different levels on our campus. right now we have a number of food shelfs that kind of provide an immediate need. but we need to work on it systemically. you know, it's a situation not just on this campus, but on all the csu campuses. we need to have programs where people to recognize that they can connect to food resources off campus, such as calfresh. which is food stamps, different food shelves. but also teaching people with the food that they do get donated, how to use that in a healthier way. because often people don't donate food that's the healthiest. so it's kind of a holistic piece of of working with students. in my work, i'm working with people that those pieces of food and securities are often tied a larger root issues. so they often are in stable with housing situations. a lot of mental health pieces and so really the food is a part of the puzzle that i work with. >> very interesting. and kristine, you're part of sustainability.

how do we deal with this with 11,000 students? >> so you know like ben and stephanie we're saying that this isn't just you know, having food shelves on campus. we have a lot of other resources on campus to help students. and one of them is a garden we have right off campus on san salvador street we have a garden for students to go volunteer in. and then they can take fresh fruits and vegetables home. and we also have cooking classes on campus that are free of students to teach them how to cook these food that we are providing to them. and we also have a free breakfast club on campus. it's monday through friday in the peer connections in the student services center. and in the afternoon from 1 to 5 in the wellness lounge in the student wellness center we have afternoon snacks for students as well. i've been here 25 years, rigo and i didn't that this was going on. what made you think about doing this story? you know what as students -- what made me think about this story, is that students we're always busy, we are you know spending money on books. on tuition. so it just it just raised awareness on how students actually eat.

and what they actually eat, it's important to be healthy. and a question i really want to ask is how do -- why do students go into food insecurity? what are the main reasons? >> what are the factors that lead to that? >> well you know for me being a student, before i became a full-time employee here on campus. i face food insecurity when i was in community college up in chico. and between paying for school, paying for housing, and learning how to be an adult, sometimes your paycheck just doesn't make it to food. and so i think a lot of students are facing this. and so you know here on campus we're trying to address that in the best way that we can. and here in silicon valley our expenses are pretty high, so you can imagine why those numbers are going up. but now that we know its existing, we have various ways to deal with it. one thing is pantries talk a little bit about that. do pantries is really make a difference? do they help? i mean i do i think that they do make a difference but again it's just

to the immediate need that students are facing. so across campus we have 14 different shelf locations, where students can get free food no questions asked. so i think it does help them that way and we have definitely some responses from students through like anonymous surveys and every time i see response there's always liked it thank you for having this program and service. so i think it does help some. >> i'm sorry go ahead. >> and with the pantry just to add on too that it's it's a great resource to have. but again with ben, as he mentioned we need that holistic approach. a pantry provides non-perishable food items for that immediate need that you have. but we also provide additional resources, education. because once you get that food how do you continue to budget yourself and plan in the future after you graduate from san jose state? how do you continue to succeed academically and experience and then just kind of stopped experiencing food insecurity. so again pantry is great, but there are additional resources and education that is. >> that makes sense you don't want to create a dependency,

concept where somebody's going to have to do this for the rest of your life. you've got to figure it out as you go along. very good but then once you've done that, i'm curious about the pantry just in this regard, how do people, can people donate to it? where do you get the food? >> absolutely, so people definitely can donate to and our program. they would contact probably me or any of the members on the student hungry committee just saying that they would like to donate and we have specific donation guidelines. you know, no expired food, non-perishable food items, also we have our website so if you'd like to donate online you can go to sjsu.edu/food and there's a little icon that says donate. so we definitely appreciate donations because it costs approximately $2000 a month to purchase food, so. >> rigo, you're student on this campus you came up with a story idea, but most importantly i want to ask you, how do students talk about these issues? do -- are you aware students who need this kind of help? >> to be honest, i don't think students talk about it, because, you know, there is a sense of embarrassment and

i'm not aware of it but now that i'm doing the story more and researching i'm looking at stats and data and it's a big issue. it's a big and i really want to make this more for people to actually see that this is actually happening >> very good. ben i was going to ask you, as a faculty member and a school director, i sometimes encounter students where they're in trouble and they need food. and they don't know where to turn and they don't know about these options. so we as faculty we try to get the word out, but what more can we do other than say, there's help go get it. what do you say when you talk to students? >> i think that's a great question asked and i think the biggest piece is helping normalized on that there -- this is a reality on college campuses. and breaking down the stigma of talking about the fact that i have food insecurities or i'm couch surfing or i'm depressed. there's a lot of pieces that we have so the social stigma, don't talk about this is a subject. there's people that i've worked with as students that have taken food

from the food pantries, but have to double check to make sure that nobody's watching them taking it. because it's hard for them to admit that i need assistance right now. and to talk to friends about that. there's students that i work with that because they're international students, or an ab 540 student that can't work off-campus and the opportunities for income or a little bit different for them. and so they feel a little bit in a different place, when they're at a student group meeting that's off campus at a restaurant. everybody else is ordering a meal and they have to publicly say and make up a lie of, oh i just ate. and then they sit there and stare into somebody's food while everybody else that has the privilege and accessibility to have food just sits there is an eats like it's nothing. >> i think the biggest pieces to look out for the peers and also open that invitation that if you're in a spot where you can't afford it right now, feel free to be able to share that with us. and then for peers to be able to work together to say, hey maybe this time we'll meet in a different location or we'll order for everybody together and pour our money.

i think a social stigma is a really big piece we need to challenge on this campus. and we're not talking about homeless students. we're talking about because you have financial challenges. >>a little bit of both. i've certainly worked with college students on our campus that are homeless, folks that either have their housing situations change. they've been kicked out of apartments, they are couch surfing some that have purposely slept in cars because they want to save money, so they have money for food that -- they're having to decide between that. you know elizabeth shared the 1 in 3 stat earlier, but i think the other one is 1 in 5 of our students will go an entire day without eating food. a student i met with two weeks ago on friday had gone three days before he had eaten food. i mean i had a banana and some chocolate-chip cookies in my office and i basically had to force him to take them. so it's hard even when you're meeting with someone one to one, that you're sharing deeply about your situation, that there's still a lot of sometimes shame of wanting to accept that help.

so yeah i think that the pieces food insecurity, housing insecurities this all can be connected together. not everybody has all those situations but when we open on ourselves up to be able to say share your situation how can we work on it together? >> this is very halting to hear, you never think of a college campus like san jose state or any other campus having these type of issues. >> well and like we said earlier it's not just our campus, a few of the members of the committee went and visited berkeley. they have a food pantry there on campus, and their 1 in 5 students on uc campuses that are facing food insecurity. so it's definitely an issue you know across the united states and in california and on our campus. >> and marketing is got to be a roll or gotta play a major role in this, but you talk about the stigma students don't want to talk about it. they don't wanna admit it. so how do you get a conversation going? how do you get students to actually pay attention to the idea? >> one of the tag lines that we try to keep using is "keeping spartans fed" and using the word spartans is important to us because we want students to know that you are not alone.

you are with fellow spartans. and so with our marketing we do events, we do tabling sessions. we try to make it engaging as much as we can. so by doing that we open this environment of just you know, so we're smiling more, engaging people and expressing that you're not alone. >> very good. rigo, you wanted to ask some questions as well. >> yes so what what else -- so i wanted to ask about the so are you guys also working on outside of sjsu, maybe linking with other food pantries. so students could if they're embarrassed, to actually come to you guys maybe they could go outside of school. and maybe get some assistance from there. >> referrals, if you will. >> i'd say that with the students that i work with one to one, every single time that i meet with them i'm giving them all the options. because they might not always feel comfortable with one option, or one option might work well for the weekdays when they're in classes. but when there's, you know, weekend the food pantries are available. you know for the most part. so i'm working to talk with them about what calfresh is. and a large amount of our students are actually eligible,

because the threshold in santa clara county is a little bit different than it is nationwide. and so a lot of our students are eligible for calfresh or through second harvest to get some groceries in a bag like that. so it's giving them the options and see how we can meet their needs. in a lot of different ways. but a lot of students don't have the money for even for some cheap foods. so all these options are really helpful. >> another question i have is what can fellow students do in order to meet their needs? >> what can they do to help? >> correct. and again donations is a huge push that we actually tell our campus. donating online the projects that we have it's funded mainly through donations. donations through fellow spartans, alumni, and other members of the community but also volunteer work. elizabeth works really closely with our volunteers. students can volunteer and help us pass on information and work at different sites. >> yeah, exactly and i've had about 11 volunteers helping me this semester

and one of the main things that were pushing for his classroom presentations. and passing around sign-in sheet for students to request more information. so a lot of the fliers that are at each of the 14 locations i have electronically. so i try send that as well as encourage other students to share this information too. and then all of our eateries on campus, we have donation boxes right by the registers. so you know, if you don't want to donate online students can donate even their change into these boxes and it all makes a difference. >> can departments on campus get involved in this process as well? i know during the holidays we do. but what about year round? >> actually we just as something recently, last fall, where all the colleges on campus had a competition to see which college could donate more to this program. it was an amazing competition. it really helped boost our funds. and so any faculty member or staff member can be involved. >> very good. and i think even at lower levels you know, college campuses are known for events. and known for events that have food and unfortunately at the end there's often a lot of food left over.

and so whether it's tweeting out to let students know that there's extra food available and that they were welcomed into those programs that maybe didn't really care for the content knowledge of the topic of that presentation. but to go there and get that food that's available. and students will rush in when they know it's available. >> we have a twitter handle @sjsufreefood so that's something states can follow get free food. >> what was that again? say it one more time. >> @sjsufreefood >> very good. and at the other end of the spectrum is once the student is about to graduate, they've gone through the program. they've had helped through the program. now they're trying to find a competitive job and sometimes that will pay well sometimes it doesn't how do you help set up students for the future? what can we do to help in that regard? >> that's actually one of the next steps for our committee because right now we're focusing on available resources and education and cooking healthy and budgeting. i think again with that holistic approach our next step is how do we figure out once they leave our campus how can we continue to assist them?

if they move to another state how can we continue to educate them. so that's going to be the next phase for our committee >> and i'd say that one thing that we've just started at this semester vice president of student affairs reggie blaylock really started a new thing called the economic crisis response team. and i sit on that team and it's looking at crisis response right. and but often a food is a very big piece of that. but it's not just hear some $500 to help right now, here's a bag of groceries. it's gonna have to be ongoing holistic follow up seeing how the students doing academically. how are they connecting socially? in that ongoing kind of case management pieces that we'll be able to do with those students that will at least kind of teach them some longer level skills for their time at the institution. and so it food or hunger doesn't become the reason that they have to drop out because it's expensive to go to college, you know. 30 over a third of our students, i think it's 33.4% of our students have an efc and expected family contribution of 0.

and so these are students that are coming in which, you know, we we think of college students going back home to a family that can provide those meals. over a third of our college students have family that are not able to fiscally contribute to their education. they're are also probably not able to fiscally contribute to the food on the table. >> and their well being overall. so sustainability how do we get that notion across so that we continually explain to students, faculty, staff, everyone that this is something everybody can be involved in? >> what can they do? >> well like we said you know you can donate, you can come to our meetings. and we have a meeting once a month on mondays from 1 to 2 p.m. in the a.s. house and it's open to the whole university. so people that sit on our committee are spartan shops, we have associated students, we have different faculty members and students as well, so anyone's able to come to these meetings and contribute their ideas. >> and we encourage people to spread the word. something that we have to remember is they might have friends that are going through food insecurity but they're not confident

enough to talk to a faculty or staff member. but they feel like they can't speak to their friends, so we encourage students to spread the word. at spartan shops we have trained our employees and our supervisors, to know where to direct an employee to resources if they hear that the employees dealing with food insecurity. >> very good. spread the word is kind of what you're doing with your story. by telling people about this. but what impact are you hoping for? what do you think is going to happen? i'm hoping that students just get their fresh meals every day and their bag of groceries. and i hope that food insecurity ends in college campuses worldwide. >> but realistically we know berkeley's got this issue, we've got this issue, other campuses have this issue. is there anything that the student administration or anything that the the campus administration can do more to just publicize this because i think we're doing a service right now. but we never hear about these this level of issues. >> with administration right now they know about this issue, and they're currently researching and finding more data to help support a more sustainable program

that can last a longer period of time for all of our students. so it's definitely something that we've met with them about. we've done presentations. so they know that the problem is real and they're looking into what the best solution is. >> and this is a state school public institution where students come from a variety of backgrounds with a variety of needs and sometimes we have to have to stop and take a look at all of those needs not just a financial one. thank you very much. great topic. great idea. thank you all for coming in and we thank you for joining us. we hope you'll come back for another edition of equal time. [music] [music]

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