MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
It's finals week at many colleges, so a stressful time for students across the country. To make matters worse, 2 in 5 students face food insecurity. That's according to the nonprofit Swipe Out Hunger. With the holidays around the corner, it's also students' last chance to snag anything they might need from the school's food pantry before campus closes for winter break. NPR's Kadin Mills met some of those students at Penn State Harrisburg.
LEON GARLAND: Finals is going to be a really stressful week.
KADIN MILLS, BYLINE: It's Leon Garland's first time visiting the campus food pantry.
GARLAND: If you don't have enough food available, it could definitely give you that mental feeling that's like, I'm dragging myself. It's going to make you feel anxious, a little bit drowsy. I know that feeling all too well from my past.
MILLS: Garland is a freshman studying electrical engineering. He does a lot of the cooking for his three roommates. One of them is Zephaniah Waldron, who Garland has dragged to the food pantry with him.
(SOUNDBITE OF PACKAGE RUSTLING)
ZEPHANIAH WALDRON: If I saw ramen, I would have grabbed some.
GARLAND: Yeah. Your bag would have been full of it.
MILLS: While they only met this semester, they tease each other like they've been friends for years.
WALDRON: Hey, I can cook a mean alfredo.
GARLAND: Are you flexing a basic spaghetti dish? (Laughter).
WALDRON: No. You have to make the sauce yourself.
GARLAND: Oh, that's different.
RYLEE MARTINEZ: Anything in this room - you're limited to one thing per item.
MILLS: The two roommates are getting an introduction to the pantry from student Rylee Martinez, who works here.
MARTINEZ: And then anything in there, you could take whatever you need.
MILLS: Across the country, grocery prices are rising. That's according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And for some students, it's also the time of year when the balance on their meal plans at the cafeteria start to run low.
AIMEE WHEELER: We try to really supply the students with whatever we possibly can.
MILLS: That's Aimee Wheeler. She works for the college and oversees the food pantry, which is available to the school's roughly 5,000 students. She says she's seen a huge uptick this year.
WHEELER: Three hundred sixty-seven students visited the pantry in the month of November. I expect to see even more in January and February.
MILLS: Most of the food at the pantry comes from the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank. They also stock the pantry with other essentials donated by the community. Everything is sorted into three rooms.
WHEELER: This is what we call our take-one room - anything from trash bags, laundry pods, tampons, pads, shampoo, conditioner. This stuff is very highly sought out.
MILLS: It's also where they keep the really popular items, like the college classic instant ramen, which Wheeler says never stays on the shelves long.
(SOUNDBITE OF PACKAGE CRINKLING)
MILLS: The other rooms are stocked with nonperishables - cans of fruit, veggies, dry goods and coffee. But right now, with finals, there's only decaf left.
WHEELER: College students don't want decaf.
(SOUNDBITE OF PACKAGE CRINKLING)
MILLS: Wheeler says part of her job is destigmatizing the food pantry.
WHEELER: Sometimes there's a misconception that, well, if you're paying for college, you should have money for food.
MILLS: She points to international students, many of whom are ineligible to work off campus. And many of the other students who visit the food pantry have jobs.
MYLES PERRY: When I feel like, OK, I need to eat something, it's like, how much do I have in the fridge?
MILLS: Myles Perry is a junior at the college. He's majoring in mechanical engineering, and the pantry helps him make ends meet when money from his campus job runs short.
PERRY: You never know how many hours you're going to have. Like, it varies week to week, and, you know, that's when the pay, you know, gets to fluctuating. So you never realize how much you can spend in a week.
MILLS: Especially when it comes to groceries, something he says people, even his mom, don't fully realize.
PERRY: She's like, what do you spend your money on? I'm like, food. You spend that much on food? Have you seen the prices in the grocery stores?
MILLS: He says he used to feel embarrassed to use the food pantry.
PERRY: At the end of the day, we've all start from somewhere. I have rather go through these challenges when I'm younger, and then when I get older, I learn from it and know how to give back.
MILLS: In other words, students shouldn't be afraid to ask for what they need.
PERRY: I mean, hey, you got to eat.
MILLS: Kadin Mills, NPR News, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
(SOUNDBITE OF BADBADNOTGOOD'S "TIMID INTIMIDATING") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.