USU’s student food pantry sees record number of users

In just one year, the number of students using Student Nutrition Access Center (SNAC) services at Utah State University has increased immensely and has created some new challenges for the center.

SNAC is a student-run organization that collects food donations to give to Utah State University students who are having a hard time paying for food themselves.

“For a long time SNAC was kind of like a secret. No one was coming,” said Hannah Nickerson, the student director of SNAC “Now word has really gotten out, and so we have a ton of traffic coming through the pantry.”

In 2015, the pantry averaged two to six students per week, Nickerson said. This year SNAC has had as many as 126 students use its services in a week.

Barbara Freeman, a committee member of SNAC, attributes the increase in students to events like the Hunger Banquet, which highlighted SNAC’s activities during its September meeting.

“We have people lining up before we open, but we are almost wiped out after 20 minutes,” Nickerson said.

Freeman expressed concern that not all of the students were using SNAC services because they needed the food.

“I think there are some people who just want some food for right now and there are some students that definitely need it,” Freeman said.

Freeman said she has seen a lot of the same students in every week. That’s not what SNAC is for, Nickerson said.

“The purpose of a food pantry is to be a sort of safety net for people,” Nickerson said. “It’s really not meant to be a person’s only source of food.”

SNAC’s policy for allowing people to take food from the pantry is that as long as users can show proof of being a student, they can have food.

“It’s not my place to know if people need food or not,” Nickerson said. “We don’t really ask any financial questions.”

The increase of students has also limited the variety of foods SNAC can offer all students.

“If someone comes at four, an hour after we’ve been open, they might not have very much to choose from,” Nickerson said.

Though Nickerson admits not having a lot of different food options isn’t ideal, she has said that it isn’t the top priority of the pantry.

“It’s different than a grocery store where you can pick whatever you would like,” Nickerson said. “We don’t have any control about what comes in because we take what we can get.”

—shaniehoward214@gmail.com