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When Amanda Flanagan meets with students, their needs are urgent. For lack of a few dollars, many are ready to drop out of college. They may not have enough money for a train pass to get to class, or they can’t afford a required textbook. But what really gets her is when they admit they don’t have enough food to eat. She’ll pull a granola bar from her drawer, and when she hands it over, they break down and cry.
About 3.8 million college students, or 23 percent, experienced food insecurity in 2020. Some 40 percent of them qualify for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP—so the recent withholding of SNAP benefits and the possibility of future cuts have been devastating.
That’s where Amanda Flanagan comes in—along with volunteer staff and faculty at universities campuses across the country. Flanagan, who wrote about her experience with the FAST Fund on AFT Voices, leads the FAST Fund at Stony Brook University in New York. Short for “faculty and students together,” it is often union-driven, run by university staff to help students facing financial emergencies. Awards average just $250, but they make all the difference in keeping students in school. And, says Traci Kirtley, executive director of Believe in Students, the nonprofit that oversees FAST Funds, half the requests are for food assistance.
Real-world problems
“It’s been such an eye-opening experience,” says Flanagan, who manages the department of mechanical engineering at Stony Brook. Before she got involved with the FAST Fund she thought about students in academic terms—what classes they needed, for example, and when they might register. “But there’s so much more that’s going on in their lives.”
Some are single parents working multiple jobs outside of class. Others have parents and siblings who depend on them financially. All who come to FAST Funds are struggling, and many have overlapping needs. They’ll say things like “I’m trying to figure out how to pay my utility bill,” or “the reason I don’t have money for groceries is because I had an unexpected car repair,” says Kirtley.
One of the earliest FAST Fund programs was started in 2016 by members of AFT Local 212, the faculty-staff union at Milwaukee Area Technical College. Their premise—that funds be made available quickly and without the red tape and lengthy applications often required for college-run funds—makes them a nimble way to get students the help they need.
FAST Funds have helped students at about 45 campuses, where each fund responds to the unique needs of its own students. To date, they have provided nearly $5 million in total direct emergency aid and assisted nearly 12,000 students nationally. Of those students, 92 percent have persisted in their college education.
Uptick in food insecurity—and everything else
Kendra Stern, an academic adviser who manages the FAST Fund at Northeastern Illinois University, saw her first request for assistance with food stamps in October; it came with a photo of a student’s zero balance bank account. The next day, there was a similar request, and a third came in two days later. “That’s a new one for me,” says Stern. “No one has ever said, ‘For some reason my SNAP benefits aren’t working,’ or ‘The government has shut down.’” Requests for assistance at the NEIU fund have gone from one or two a month to one or two a day since Oct. 15, says Stern, “more than we’ve ever gotten.”
At MATC, where the FAST Fund began, Executive Director Bria Burris says she too has seen an uptick in requests, and about 25 percent of them are for food assistance. The SNAP cuts had a real impact. “Many of my students already struggle to balance work, school and parenting while facing financial insecurity,” says Luz Sosa, an economics instructor and member of Local 212. “For those raising children, these cuts mean more than just empty cupboards—they mean choosing between food and rent, between health and education.”
Because of SNAP interruptions, “students are facing another uncertainty at a very vulnerable time,” says Danielle Osmelak, a professor and speech pathologist who helps run the FAST Fund at Governors State University in Illinois. “$100 is the difference between going hungry or not.”
Many of the requests are interrelated. For example, if a student pays her utility bill, she may have nothing left for food. At NEIU, students frequently ask for help with housing. One student couldn’t afford her psychiatric medicine. Another needed eyeglasses. A third was in so much pain with a tooth infection he couldn’t attend class; FAST Fund helped him pay for the medical treatment he needed. Students need books, gas for their cars.
When FAST Fund volunteers put out a notice that need was rising due to federal cuts and also because of encounters immigrant students were having with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, donations poured in: The group raised more than $3,000 in five days. “I was so proud of our membership who stepped up,” says Stern, who is a member of the Northeastern chapter of University Professionals of Illinois.
Some might ask why unions, which typically focus on member pay and benefits, would do this work. Osmelak doesn’t hesitate: “When we think about union power and being united, it’s to support others, to lift other people up,” she says. “The reason we go in every single day is to support our students. What better way to do that than to meet them where they are?”
Even—or perhaps especially—when “where they are” is out of money.
[Virginia Myers]