Survey: 37% of Madison College students experience food insecurity

Amanda Quintana by Amanda Quintana

Madison Area Technical College is working to fight student hunger after a recent survey showed more than one-third of the student population is skipping meals because they can’t afford food.

“They just don’t have enough money to buy food or have enough time to set up healthy food for themselves,” said Steven Ansorge, president of the school’s Student Senate.

On Tuesday, the school hosted a Food Security Resource Fair to help students become more aware of the local food resources available to them.

Organizations including Second Harvest, Willy Street Co-op and River Food Pantry handed out free food and details about their programs.

“This is kind of helping get students the support they need to be more successful, even better students,” said Ansorge. “If you’re hungry in class, you’re not going to be able to focus on what the teacher is telling you, the lesson that’s trying to be taught.”

There’s a stereotype about college students surviving on the cheapest food possible. The food insecurity issue is all too real at @MadisonCollege. A survey shows 37% of students are skipping meals because they don’t have enough money to eat. #news3 pic.twitter.com/GC4a4ogbOg — Amanda Quintana (@AmandaQTV) October 16, 2018

University of Wisconsin-Madison students Abigail Sann and Susan Maloney are dedicated to addressing this issue. They partnered to come up with an idea that would help college students with food insecurity.

“Not a lot of people know about the term food insecurity and know how widespread the problem can be, especially at two-year institutions like MATC, where there’s a lot more what might be called untraditional students, that are supporting families, supporting children, who are working multiple jobs and are going to school part time,” said Maloney.

Sann and Maloney received $7,000 in grants, including a Wisconsin Idea Fellowship grant, to fund a yearlong project taking on hunger at MATC.

They said the fair on Tuesday was just the beginning. They hope to talk to students and find more ways to get them the assistance they need.

“Really, we’ve kind of just been guests here in the Madison College space and just listening to see how we can best help,” said Sann.

Fighting food insecurity is one of the priorities of MATC’s 2018-2019 budget. The school has allocated up to $75,000 to develop strategies to address student hunger.

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