For many college students, attending a four-year university is an expensive endeavor, often involving student loans and financial aid to ensure enrollment. Expenses pile up along with workloads, stress and sleep deprivation. The average student has to juggle many financial challenges during their college career, all while trying to maintain good grades in the hopes of securing a job after graduation, furthering the financial burden on their bank accounts.
On top of managing school work and striving to obtain a well-rounded education supplemented with robust extracurriculars, many college students also struggle to feed themselves adequately throughout the day. Despite what seems like generous financial aid plans from prestigious universities in and around Boston, results from a student survey at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology indicated that 10 percent of its students go to bed hungry at least once during the week.
This is an alarmingly high statistic, given colleges’ efforts to prevent this issue. Regardless, students from across the Greater Boston area have expressed grievances with their college’s expensive dining options and other expenses that have contributed to their escalating debt. But obtaining food should be the last thing college students should worry about. Students not feeding themselves points to a number of systemic issues in our colleges and universities.
Many of these problems boil down to the the embarrassment many students feel when they’re on a tight budget. Especially for students at private universities, many feel like they’re alone in their struggles, assuming their classmates coming from more wealthy and privileged backgrounds do not have to worry about having enough money to eat. The reality is that many of their peers are experiencing the same issues. Often, students have a pretty small balance that they use to pay for school supplies, rent and other necessities.
However, an unfortunate symptom of students being fiscally unsound is that this is often accepted as typical college culture. Many laugh or dismiss not being able to eat as just something they have to embrace under the stereotype of poor college students, surviving off of eating Ramen noodles and using other cheap dining options. While prioritizing homework and other assignments certainly is a factor for students going hungry before they sleep, for students who are struggling to get by, this could be especially problematic in terms of self-care. This adds another layer of stress and leads to a potentially dangerous train of thought for those students — if I can’t afford to eat anyway, then I might as well go to bed hungry.
Furthermore, while buying groceries proves to be a cheaper option, mainly due the price of swiping into the dining hall — which at Boston University averages to around $12 — some students simply do not have that option. Using the college’s financial aid program often means having to use the school’s dining plan as well. In turn, those students end up taking on more debt and are left with no options to find cheaper dining options. In addition, swiping into the dining hall or using meal swipes at the university’s student union can be a taxing, calculating experience. Students are constantly balancing their accounts to ensure they will be able to sustain themselves at least till the end of the semester. Many dining options offered by universities are not generous enough in that they do not provide enough meals or dining dollars for the semester for a fair price.
In an effort to combat these issues, several New England colleges have opened food pantries or introduced meal-sharing options. At MIT, the administration is considering making handbooks for students on making more fiscally-sound decisions. However, this does not address the greater issues of meals being too expensive or students not being able to afford alternative options. Rather, this handbook only perpetuates the notion that poor students simply have to deal with unaffordable prices. A systemic issue requires a solution that addresses the system’s flaws and internal issues.
In order to fix this issue, BU should look at adapting a meal swipe donation program similar to those found at Tufts University and MIT. Students who find they have leftover meal swipes for the week or extra guest meals can enter their swipes onto a website anonymously, and then students who have either run out or are in need of food can use those swipes. Not only would this create a mutually beneficial environment, but it is also a step in the right direction to solve a system that hurts students’ health and well-being.
