Over the past few weeks, the issue of funding the Food Resource Center (FRC) has come to a head. Currently, Hamline Undergraduate Student Congress (HUSC) is partially funding the FRC with $15,000 of its own budget, but many have argued that student congress is not where the money should be coming from. HUSC’s External President, Travis Matthews, has been working on institutionalizing the FRC funding and is now proposing a student fee that directly funds the FRC, a change that has already passed through HUSC’s Board of Elected Representatives.
“[The FRC] should really have its own sustainable line of funding so that way it doesn’t have to be in this risky area every year trying to get funding. The idea is that by taking this out slowly and creating a fee that would go directly to the FRC, it would alleviate the burden off of HUSC,” Matthews said.
Many students, such as sophomore Matthew Maroney, a Feed Your Brain (FYB) leader, expressed discomfort in the budget shifting for the FRC as FYB does not want to lose this crucial resource. However, in an attempt to prevent this loss, HUSC expressed that they would slowly decrease the funding over time to make sure the change does not cause the FRC to shut down.
“[Losing the FRC] would mean so many more students from Hamline would be food insecure,” Maroney said. “That is why the FRC is important: not only making sure that we are building healthy people who have enough to eat, people who are going to have better life outcomes as people because they had good nutrition while they were in college, [it is] also making sure that people are fed and able to pay attention in class and able to retain what they learned during class.”
Matthews mentioned that HUSC will ensure the FRC is funded if these plans fall through, but Maroney believes that might not be enough to preserve the center as it is.
“Current funding levels aren’t enough. Our focus shouldn’t be on sustaining the status quo with regard to the FRC, it should be expanding its operations, expanding the amount of food that it brings and expanding its ability to put food on the shelf,” Maroney said.
HUSC leadership’s hope was for Hamline to take over these costs, but these negotiations are coming at a time when the university is already struggling to balance its budget.
“Some of our costs the university is facing, [do] not match what we have in revenue, so we’re having to make tough choices,” Matthews said.
Alternatively, funding the FRC through a student fee rather than through tuition would mean that the FRC cannot disappear when university budget cuts occur. Continued funding through a student fee creates stability for the resource center and provides more consistent food security for students by cementing the FRC into the university.
“[The fee] will be about roughly $80 per student but if you break it down, that is $40 per semester and $2.50 per week,” Matthews said. “The idea is that if you go at least one time to the FRC, you’ve essentially gotten what you paid for.”
According to Matthews, included in this fee, which will provide the FRC with approximately $120,000, is the salary of a full-time employee to run the FRC. This salary is in addition to about $60,000 to be devoted to consistently and fully stocking the center with an appropriate amount of food.
“We would actually be able to hire a full-time basic needs case manager to handle services in the FRC. This is probably the greatest thing about creating this funding is that by having this person we wouldn’t have to just only focus on food access, we could focus on basic needs in general,” Matthews said.
This resolution has passed through the Board of Elected Representatives and now only needs to pass through the Executive Board at HUSC’s General Assembly. Matthews will present the proposition and elected representatives will state their position on the issue, ultimately deciding if this student fee will be enacted. Voting takes place tomorrow, April 16, during convo hour from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in GLC 100E.