By Jesse Turner
The ASPSU Student Food Pantry is an amazing resource for students who are experiencing hunger or economic hardships. The Food Pantry is a free resource for students to pick up non-perishable food items throughout the school week. The pantry is located in Smith Student Union, room 325, and is open Monday through Friday, 12pm to 2pm. All of the food items come from the Oregon Food Bank.
Unfortunately, hunger is more of an issue in our community than the Food Pantry can accommodate. This term’s pantry intern is in one of my classes and she said that PSU is allowed to take up to 10,000 pounds of food from the Oregon Food Bank. However, the amount of food they can actually take depends on the vehicles that show up for haul food. The pantry does not have a designated van or truck and it all depends on staff members and volunteers with vehicles. She said that often they are only able to take around 2,000 pounds. One day, all of the food in the pantry was gone within 40 minutes. The pantry also does not have a refrigerator, making other staple but perishable food items impossible to hold.
The Food Pantry needs drivers. If you have a vehicle, even a small one, please consider volunteering to take food from the OFB to campus. The amount of food they can haul directly relates to how many people they can feed. No one in our community should go hungry. Please contact the Food Pantry coordinator at pantry@pdx.edu for further information.