BOWLING GREEN, Ohio — University students often find toward the end of a semester that they have more swipes than they can hope to use.
The Falcon Care program is aiming to help students put those swipes to good use.
The program, which has been in effect since the fall semester, allows on-campus students with meal plan to donate unused swipes to students who are in need of food.
Much of the concern comes from the needs of off-campus students in particular, according to sophomore Nadia Oehler, who spearheaded the program.
Oehler is the Student Affairs Chair in the University Undergraduate Student Government.
“There is this huge need by students struggling with hunger that typically happens off-campus because they don’t have the dining meal plan that’s required of all on-campus students,” she said. “[Falcon Care] kind of just spurred out of this desire to do something about students who were feeling like they had too many swipes at the end of the semester.”
The inability of an individual to get nutritional food is called “food insecurity,” and it isn’t generally associated with college students. The recent rise of college tuition nationwide has had an effect on meal budgeting for those attending college.
According to the Michigan State University Food Bank, the number of university campus food banks in the U.S. shot up from one in 2007 to 121 in 2014. Additionally, a survey conducted last year by the University of Oregon found that 59 percent of their campus had recently experienced food insecurity.
Students who wish to donate swipes may donate one per week, which go to a single “swipe bank” collected by dining services. Swipes are taken from the bank and put on cards with five swipes each, which Oehler said is for “a meal per day.”