As many Carleton University students returned to some semblance of normalcy at the beginning of the 2022-23 academic year, the school’s Unified Support Centre (USC) began facing record high demands, with hundreds of students seeking support from its food bank service each month.
But without designated funding for the centre’s food bank service, the USC’s services are at risk. Heading into the Carleton University Students’ Association’s (CUSA) 2023 general election, CUSA council has approved and endorsed the centre’s calls for increased funding.
It now leaves the USC’s fate partially in the hands of undergraduate students with a referendum on creating a new levy fee of $2.98 per term.
Owned by CUSA and run by three staff members and just fewer than 50 volunteers, this small team distributed 3,041 food hampers to Carleton students from the start of the summer term and the beginning of the new year. This is more than their previous total of hampers distributed between the start of the pandemic and 2022 summer term.
In addition to providing a record number of hampers, the centre’s small team continued to provide their foot patrol service.
Nearly all of the USC’s funding comes from undergraduate students’ foot patrol levy of $1.43 per term, which totals to about $66,000. Its total funding, which includes additional funding from CUSA, is about $90,000, according to draft budget estimates.
This funding remains far short of what’s needed to support the continuously increasing demands, according to the USC’s estimates.
“We’re just getting by right now,” Neeharika Saha, the centre’s only full-time staff member, told the Charlatan earlier this month.
Just a few days after the new year, she was already back at work providing students with emergency essentials on campus.
According to the same budget, the centre’s projected expenses for this fiscal year are $211,520.84. This leaves the centre in need of approximately $121,000 to sustain its current rate of operations.
“There’s obviously a food insecurity crisis on campus,” CUSA president Anastasia Stoikos-Lettieri said.
Graduate students in limbo
But a closer look at the USC’s usage statistics paints a much more complicated image of the situation. Approximately 80 per cent of the food bank’s services go to graduate students, according to Stoikos-Lettieri.
An agreement between CUSA and the Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) exists to decide how much the GSA pays CUSA for using their service centres. The agreement expired at the beginning of this academic year, according to Stoikos-Lettieri, leaving the USC without payment from the GSA despite graduate students driving the centre’s unprecedented increases in demand.
During the GSA’s Oct. 25 council meeting, Saha, Stoikos-Lettieri and Liam Callaghan, the centre’s operations coordinator, asked the GSA for $110,000 in additional funding to support the USC’s increased demand from graduate students. Saha told council the USC’s support for graduate students would be at risk if the additional funding was not approved.
GSA council then voted to pay for any outstanding fees and to plan for a referendum on a USC levy fee for graduate students while exploring alternative options for food bank services for graduate students.
Currently, the centre provides the numbers of hampers distributed to graduate students to the GSA every month and they pay accordingly. CUSA declined to share further details about this payment model.
“We currently have no concerns around this payment method and the GSA is up to date on their amounts owed,” Stoikos-Lettieri wrote in an email to the Charlatan. “We are not comfortable sharing the invoice amounts and our decision to not disclose this information is to protect the confidentiality of the students that the USC serves.”
GSA president Milan Sanghani did not provide comment in time for publication.
“As long as [the GSA] hold up their end of the agreement, then we will support graduate students as much as we can,” Saha told the Charlatan. “We don’t want to cut off anyone that needs support, but if things come down to it and we can’t find any other funding sources, then unfortunately it will come down to that.”
Alternative ways to meet demands
Additional funding from students is not the only way the USC is looking to meet demands.
In October, CUSA’s Board of Directors allocated the former INS Market space in Nideyinàn (formerly the University Centre) to the USC after a successful proposal by the centre. The proposal argued the USC’s current space can no longer store the amount of food needed to meet demands.
There’s obviously a food insecurity crisis on campus.
In November, Stoikos-Lettieri told the Charlatan the goal was to begin operating from the new space by the start of the winter term. But Saha gave an updated timeline of summer 2023 earlier this month, due to the amount of renovation needed.
“Currently we have an additional storage room, but it is packed already,” Saha said.
Once the USC moves to the new space, the centre will be able to purchase and store a lot more items, she said.
Consequently, moving to a larger space means an initial increase in costs, Stoikos-Lettieri said. The USC is actively seeking grants as well as donations from the community to afford the move and increase their funding in general.
Stoikos-Lettieri added in an email that CUSA has recently created a campus-wide food insecurity advisory committee in collaboration with the university’s student experience office to address how to help the USC combat the crisis.
CUSA is also working to establish the USC as a registered charity. This would make the centre eligible for several government grants.
It’s a long process, Saha said, with the timeline no longer in their hands. She has been involved with the food bank service since 2017, seeing it grow to what it is today while witnessing food insecurity rise in Ottawa and among university students.
“Right now, we’re helping so many students in need, and I am very grateful to be a part of it,” she said. “I’m happy to stick around for as long as I’m needed.”
Featured photo by Spencer Colby.
