Food Insecurity Essay

2. This article describes why food insecurity among college students has increased since 2008. Paul Vaughn is an economics major and a third year at George Mason University. He wanted to save money so he decided to live off campus. At his campus, the basic campus meal plan costs $1575 and provides 10 meals a week for a semester. He decided that he is going to skip the meal plan and buy his own food. However, he had difficulty buying food with $50 a week. He had to work two jobs in order to pay for his food. He states that he spends more time thinking about how he is going to make some money so he can eat. He should be spending time thinking about doing homework and studying for a test. What Vaughn is going through is called “food insecurity”.

In the past, not everyone went to college. Now most people go to college because they find that a college degree is essential in today’s economy. Many college students find is difficult to budget. Karen Gerlack, vice president for student affairs at Trinity, asks “If you have only $10 a day, how do you keep within that budget and make sure you’re getting your nutritional needs met?”. Sometimes students don’t know that there are campus programs that will help with their situation. Many are reluctant to ask. College students often find it humiliating to ask for help. A 21 year old student from Penn State is the first who is on track to graduate from college in his family. He feels that he doesn’t like to ask for help in his time of struggle. He wants to be able to provide for himself. Three main points I found important in this article was that we need to realize that we have food insecurity among many college students, we need to develop programs that will help students meet their nutritional needs and not break their budget at every campus, and we need to inform students that there is help available and it is okay to ask for