There is an issue among students that is rarely discussed at Grand Valley State University but is highly prevalent: the affordability of food. Many students groan when they have to spend $50 or more on a grocery trip because it takes out a big portion of their earnings. Most work one or more jobs on top of a full time class load to afford necessities such as rent, gas and textbooks. Often, however, there’s not much leftover to buy food for the week.

While there has always been a stereotype of the poor college student eating nothing but Ramen noodles and macaroni, this is no laughing matter. There are students on our campus that don’t know if they’ll be able to eat dinner tonight.

This is where the Women’s Center food pantry comes in. Students can fill out an intake form to get food from the pantry that they otherwise couldn’t afford. While being able to buy food may not seem like a problem to some students, the statistics show the pantry had 588 visits and served almost 200 individual students last year.

In this issue of the Lanthorn, the article “Student food pantry seeks to expand its services” states that 16.8 percent of Michigan residents are food insecure. Being food insecure means someone does not always know where they will find their next meal. At GVSU, the Campus Climate Survey taken in 2010 found that approximately 23.5 percent of the university community experience financial hardship due to food-related concerns.

It’s clear that food is in fact an issue and we at the Lanthorn appreciate the work the Women’s Center is doing to fight this problem.

There are more questions that still need to be asked though. Today we live in a world that produces more food than ever, but more than one in seven people go hungry, according to author Raj Patel in his book “Stuffed and Starved.” Why are one billion people going hungry while one and a half billion people on the planet are overweight?

When walking or driving through downtown Grand Rapids, you’ll often pass by homeless people holding signs asking for food. Later, when you go grocery shopping at a store filled with aisles of food, it’s easy to forget the earlier scene. It’s easy to say the homeless are hungry because they are lazy. Does this same concept then apply to college students too? Are GVSU students hungry because they are lazy? We don’t think so.

Patel says hunger is so widespread and occurs too often for it simply to be blamed on the failure of someone to work hard. Patel states, “Moral condemnation only works if the condemned could have done things differently, if they had choices. Yet the prevalence of hunger and obesity affect populations with far too much regularity, in too many places, for it to be the result of some personal failing.”

At GVSU, we need to ask where our food comes from – what people have to give up to have the money to buy food. Being aware of these things is the first step toward living in a society where obesity and hunger don’t exist side by side. The Women’s Center food pantry is a great start, but it’s time that GVSU starts looking into what more we can do to fight for food justice.