New campus food pantry opens

Food Pantry

On Monday, May 2, the first of three campus food pantries opened its doors in the HUB. A partnership between the ASUW Student Food Cooperative, Kelly Ethnic Cultural Center, Student Life, and the HUB, the pantry is an opportunity to provide greater food security and basic nutritional assistance to members of the UW community. In addition to the HUB, pantries were held in the Kelly Ethnic Cultural Center. Thanks to food drives and contributions, nearly 1,000 shelf-stable, non-perishable items were collected.

Erica Weisman, co-manager of the ASUW Student Food Cooperative, remarked, “Food is very personal to everyone on this planet in some way. Joking about someone’s food intake and teasing someone for what they eat is detrimental to someone’s identity. We don’t want anyone to be ashamed of what they eat and what they’re not able to eat.”

The program hopes to expand to more days next year. “Even if one percent of this 40,000-person university deals with food insecurity, that is unacceptable,” says Weisman, who is motivated to continue this new initiative that seeks to directly give back to the campus community and change the stigma surrounding food insecurity.