Opinion Editor and Staff Writer- Soph White

Hello from United! I am Soph White, your opinion editor and co-interim president for United, which hosts the Gustie Pantry for other organizations to help navigate taking turns running and maintaining it while working towards bettering the pantry by all possible means. Our lovely president (and our Chief Editor for the paper), Junior Grace LaTourelle, is abroad enjoying Germany this fall semester, so you will be hearing from me about all the updates coming up for the Gustie Pantry and the work we plan to continue to do with it this fall!

In working with my other co-interim president and our sponsors in the Chaplain’s Office, we have been working diligently to make donations more efficient and more nutritious for the student body. We’ve been listening to your feedback and are doing what we can to the best of our abilities as student advocates to make things accessible as well as bring variety for those who may need it. We have so many ideas, but for now, we have to limit things to what we can manage as a group of students.

United has been in conversation with Dining Services, and starting this month, the Gustie Pantry has been planning a partnership with Dining Services to make the process of donations and tabling easier for students. Originally, this idea involved creating paper bags full of nutrients from foods such as tuna, granola bars, and protein shakes that would be bought in the Marketplace and then transported by the student to whoever is tabling for the Gustie Pantry that month for them to unpack and stock in the pantry. While this plan would have kept the important element of a student being able to physically hand off the food to the organization running the pantry during that month, it would become inconvenient and inefficient for most. The idea of having to pack the bags, stock the bags consistently in the Marketplace, and then unpack them to stock again becomes extremely tedious. When talking about this with the Associate Vice President of Auxiliary Services, Steve Kjellgren, he agreed on this point – it would create a waste of time and a physical waste from trashing all those bags.

For this semester, we are going to try out a new way of tabling and for students to spend their CAF dollars that will ensure there is healthy, nutritious food being donated, and that there will be products left for them to buy for donations. Orgs running the pantry for a month will need two members at the table with a sheet print-off (will be created soon in drive) that will take the name, student ID, date, and what kind of bag they are opting to purchase with their funds (either $10, $20, $30 dollar bag worth) if they want to do multiple purchases of a bag they can put that in the quantity section. Whoever takes over in the following month will pick up the food needing to be stocked from the supply in dining service storage. This will be the first thing an organization taking over will do. The end of the month will be the running organization tabling to get people to write-in donations.

Dining Services has graciously offered to donate $5,000 of their funds to the Gustie Pantry, which will bring in several orders of donatable food. Essentially, there will be a small “shop”—of sorts—run by United and other organizations on campus, where items will be bought and housed through dining services. Students would just need to come up to whoever is tabling for the pantry and fill out a form to donate a specific amount from a student’s dining dollars towards buying a certain package from the shop. These packages would be around 10-50 dollars, which would ultimately equate to the purchasing price of each item by Dining Services. In this way, students can continue to donate their funds, and dining services will be able to continue to have excess funds they can use for operating costs. The hope is that it would be a win-win for everyone. Students would have alternative routes for their dining dollars at the end of the month and be able to use them, and Dining Services would be able to continue paying for their operations out of somewhere other than from students’ excess from meal plans.

As students ourselves, we are fully aware of the tension in the relationship between students and Dining Services. We hope to give both students and Dining Services a way to look at each other differently and with understanding. Dining Services need operating funds, which, in part, came out of the excess dining dollars students could not use. Understandably, this money belongs to the students, and it is theirs to choose what they do with it, but with this change, the issue of funding for operations and students being able to use their money for things like donations would no longer be an issue within the institution. The Gustie Pantry would be able to be the medium in which both parties are able to get what they need and limit issues monetarily—at least this is our hope.

Going forward, we are looking for student feedback as to what they’d like to see in these meal packs for food we can order through the CAF for donations. During our first tabling of this month, on the 26th of September, we are planning to have a feedback survey available for students to fill out to better assess student needs. These will be anonymous, and we will not ask for a name or e-mail address.
Another aspect we are trying to implement is involving all service and leadership organizations on campus in running the Gustie Pantry. This place does not need to belong just to the Christian Organizations on campus, since our goal was to make the pantry a place where “students serve students.” So we are broadening our horizons, and we are looking for a variety of organizations to take part in running the pantry for a month during the school year. If you or your organization is interested in taking part in this opportunity for service, please contact me at sophiawhite@gustavus.edu and my Co-President, Addison Andrix, at aandrix@gustavus.edu. We are willing to sit down with groups and have documents that will aid your group in running the pantry and will be your communication partners during your involvement with it.

Thank you.
Blessings,
United Christian Ministries