A college student anti-hunger organization is advocating to pass Ohio House Bill 157, also known as the Hunger Free Campus bill. This bill would allocate $2.5 million for college students’ basic needs.
This funding would help improve food insecurity programming in the state. Similar bills have been passed in 12 states and introduced in 10 others.
House Bill 157 would offer a boost for both students and the state’s economy by promoting food security on college campuses, said Jay Lyons, the Great lakes Advocacy Organizer for Swipe Out Hunger.
"The leading reason for students not completing college is that they are having financial problems or are not able to have their basic needs met," Lyons said. "And we've seen in colleges that are able to put in these initiatives — that graduation rates and student success rates are going up. So there's really a direct correlation there of having your basic needs met leads you to be more successful and more likely to complete college."
Swipe Out Hunger has over 800 campus partners across the country working to address college student hunger and more than 30 of them are in Ohio. That includes University of Dayton, Antioch College, and Wright State and Ohio State universities.
"So we have our advocacy, which is what I'm a part of, but then we also have our programming resources," Lyons said. "So we work directly with campuses to help get them connected with grant opportunities, give them best practices to run on-campus pantries and on-campus food insecurity programs, help them institute programs that they'd be interested in."
Swipe Out Hunger also offers community resources to partner campuses to help them connect and learn from each other. Lyons said one of the most important parts of their mission is getting actual college and university students involved in their advocacy work.
“Getting that student testimonial and student perspective has always been really important to the work that we do and centering student voices I think is the way that we're able to make the biggest impact,” he said.
Lyons said the only opposition he has seen to the bill comes down to providing more funding to existing university-run programs.
“Something that I think a lot of people don't realize is that most campus pantries don't receive any funding from their institution at all," he said. "They're either entirely donation funded or grant funded, and they run all of that fundraising completely through themselves.”
The nonprofit is working with Ohio’s colleges and universities to provide testimonials on the impact that funding like the Hunger Free Campus bill would provide.
While the bill has not reached any hearings or opposition testimonies in the legal process so far, Lyons said he is hopeful for the bill to pass in Ohio like it has in many other states.
"Student hunger isn't something that needs to happen. That's something that we talk about a lot is that really with student food insecurity, I feel like it's the only place where people are expected to be food insecure," Lyons asked. "We really have been trying to combat that narrative, because what we've really seen is that students who are going through this, they're not becoming stronger by going through that."
