Bronco Student Basic Needs in 2021 – Food Insecurity Persists, Housing Insecurity Declines
Click here to read the 2nd Annual Assessment of Food Security and Basic Needs Report
From September 2021 to January 2022, our research team set out to evaluate the presence and severity of food insecurity on Santa Clara University’s campus. This report shares findings from the second systematic, student-led survey study of student food security, housing security, and food sovereignty conducted at Santa Clara University from September 2021 to June 2022. Santa Clara University, a mid-sized, Jesuit institution, has yet to conduct a formally institutionalized campus-wide assessment of basic needs insecurity. This study conducted by our research team aimed to (1) assess the current levels of student food security and perceptions of food sovereignty; (2) assess the current levels of student housing security and how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted housing security; (3) explain how SCU’s Food Insecurity Program, Financial Aid Office, and others have responded to these challenges; (4) identify what lessons can be learned in order to refine the recommendations made in the original report for addressing these challenges.
This study sought to gain a better understanding of the presence of basic needs insecurity at a small, private non-profit university such as SCU. Despite the growing number of studies on student food security on college campuses, very few studies have conducted research on these issues at private universities. This gap in literature may be a result of the stigma that students at private institutions don’t experience food, housing, and/or basic needs insecurity.
We conducted a survey within the College of Arts and Sciences and received 161 student responses. We aimed to triangulate the data in order to understand how students experience food and housing insecurity at the University and what can be done to best support them. We also sought to better understand different elements, such as socio-economic status, as they relate to food sovereignty as a conceptual approach to help generate and assess potential solutions to the expanding food and housing challenges in higher education at large.
Our survey results indicated that 1 in 5 Arts and Sciences students have self-reported experiences of food insecurity during their time at SCU. This number is slightly higher than our 2020 report, with a 1.4% increase in self-reported food insecure students in Arts and Sciences school. The sample size of this report was also significantly smaller than the 2020 study, which can be attributed to the campus climate at the time the study was conducted: over a year into the pandemic, remote classes, lack of campus presence, etc. Demographic disparities between the 2020 and 2021 studies were consistent. African American or Black, Hispanic or Latinx, Middle Eastern or North African or Arab, and bi/multi-race students have significantly more basic-needs students than their White counterparts (Table 2). These disparities can be attributed to structural racism, as the higher likelihood for social and economic disadvantage for racial and ethnic minorities, such as poverty, unemployment, incarceration, and disability exacerbate the risk of food insecurity. As we continue identifying solutions to solve this issue, we must first address these demographic disparities and approach solutions with a holistic, intersectional framework.
We hope that this study will inform the SCU community and administration of not only the prevalence of such a complicated issue such as basic needs insecurity but also the existing inequalities within the SCU community that exacerbate this issue. In order to inspire both incremental and transformational change, we provide SCU with the following recommendations:
1. Continue and grow SCU’s recently created basic needs committee
2. Support existing student mutual aid efforts for on-campus organizations to help students obtain necessary resources and support in a more accessible way
3. Help students sign-up for public benefits, like SNAP
4. Set up a basic needs emergency fund in collaboration with the financial aid
5. Increase funding to the SCU Food Security Program
6. Include food security statements and resource information on all SCU syllabi
7. Increase funding towards mental health & dietary education
Authors: Jules Holland, Katie Duffy, Madeline Pugh, Antonio Amore Rojas, and Paola Felix