Keith Edwards:
Hello and welcome to Student Affairs Now. I’m your host, Keith Edwards. Today we have some folks who have long been doing great work on understanding and working to meet college student basic needs in systematic ways. Today, we’ll talk about the ongoing challenges of housing and food insecurity within our student populations, current research, and the role colleges and universities are playing to address these concerns. Student Affairs Now is the premier podcast and learning community for thousands of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We hope you’ll find these conversations, make a contribution to the field and are restorative to the profession. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays. You can find us on StudentAffairsNow.com or on Twitter.

Keith Edwards:
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Keith Edwards:
As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he him his. I’m a speaker consultant and coach. And you can find out more about me at keithedwards.com. I’m hosting this conversation today from Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is the ancestral home of the Dakota and Ojibwe peoples. And with that, let’s get to our conversation and meet our panelists. I would love to hear from each of you just a little bit about who you are and your roles. And then we’ve got some questions for each of you and we’re going to open up to conversation. So Clare, why don’t we have you go first?

Clare Cady:
All right. Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. My name is Clare Cady, and my pronouns are she/her? I am the founding founder and board president for the College and University Food Bank Alliance which is a capacity building organization, helping colleges and universities address food insecurity on their campuses. And also the director of research and innovation at Single Stop, which is a technology non-profit that focuses on connecting people to public benefits, to help them reach their goals. And I’m just really excited to be here today.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah. Thanks so much. We’re so glad you’re here. Kim, let’s go to you.

Kim Steed-Page:
Hi my name is Kim Steed-Page. My pronouns are she her hers, and I am the director of the student parent resource center at Michigan State University. So our office is charged with providing services and support to student parents and their families, as well as expectant parents. And then we also engage in community outreach with teen parents in the area with the school district and the local community colleges. So I’ve been doing work and supporting families sort of informally around food and housing insecurity and more formally I’m a part of a research collaborative called SEEN at supporting equity and essential needs. And we’re a collaborative of researchers around Michigan State who really came together with some personal interests around this issue, as well as professional and have expanded our collaborative and did a little bit of research and focus groups, which I’ll talk about later that really has helped us learn about the need for food and housing security at Michigan State. Thank you for having me.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah. We’re glad you’re here too. And Ruben, tell us a little bit about you.

Ruben Canedo:
Well, so thank you all so much for having me here, which my name is Ruben or Ruben for folks that can roll their Rs. You’d be surprised. There’s a lot of people that can do it. I use he/they pronouns. I have a dual roles, so some of my time goes to UC Berkeley out here in the California Bay area right now coming to you live from Oakland, California, a place of healing, medicine, wisdom, and a whole bunch of troublemakers. So there’s a little bit of that. And then also some of my time goes at the UC office of the president level, really supporting the rest of our UC campuses and this basic needs journey. And I’m incredibly privileged that for the last six years we’ve been doing this and partnership with our California State Universities, which is 23 campuses and our community colleges, which is 114, the 14th being an online campus that really brings everybody together.

Ruben Canedo:
And along that journey, just because we’re so community driven and because there’s so much abundance across the country, we’ve really had this national community that’s where like Clare and a whole bunch of us have been at this for quite a couple of years now. And we get to see each other and all kinds of magical places when there’s no global pandemics and global pandemics. We find ourselves in podcasts and Twitters and serving tea to people that need to get serve some tea online sometimes because they’re bringing a whole bunch of misinformation and energy that doesn’t help anyone anywhere. So super grateful to be here with y’all.

Keith Edwards:
All right. Let’s serve tea. Let’s do that. So, Kim, let’s start with you. Let’s begin, let’s get clear particularly for folks who aren’t as familiar, all of you about when we’re talking about basic needs. What are, what does that mean? What are the challenges of basic needs in colleges and universities? Can you help us sort of understand the situation and basing these a general and food and housing insecurity specifically?

Kim Steed-Page:
Sure. I do my best. So when I think about, and when we have thought about basic needs and what students are facing it’s yes, first and foremost, you know, food and housing, and really has gone beyond that because all of their essential needs, basic needs are really intertwined. You know, when we think about student success, we’re looking at mental health you know, well-being, financial security, accessibility, you know, especially during COVID times, we’ve seen a lot of accessibility issues around technology, but also around students who have accommodation and universities not being fully prepared or equipped to, you know, take care of students when they’ve had to return home or return even on campus. So really we’re, we’re talking about the gamut from, you know, mental health food, housing, financial, emotional well-being when we’re seeing what the needs are and they are not new issues, you know, COVID kind of, you know, turn the light on for some people said, Oh, these poor students, when those of us doing the work have, have know that these are ongoing issues.

Kim Steed-Page:
And particularly our students who you know, identify with marginalized populations have, have struggled and, you know, looked for support on their campuses. So they haven’t been able to find so, and we’re talking about students at all levels, international students in particular have sets of issues that may be different or similar than domestic students, or undergraduate students have issues and challenges that may be different than our graduate students, but some of their base issues and needs for support are very similar in the same and our students of veteran status or students of parents’ status. Our LGBTQ identified students also have you know, challenges that may, that are unique and different than some of the other students and universities are not always equipped or not thinking about the way an individual student’s needs, how they’re different and how there isn’t necessarily a one size fits all, but what can we do to meet the needs of every individual, regardless of what the, you know, the challenges are in issues that they face.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah. Thanks so much for kind of for that over that definition and that broadening definition. And, and so many of the things you hit, I think that’s really important for, for us as we have this conversation and for our audience listening as well Clare, you you’ve been involved in research, you’ve got a sign behind you for those not watching. It says that’s not what the data says or something like that. Data works. That’s not how data works. So that’s a good one. We are seeing more and more research on basic needs and the challenges folks are facing thanks to you and, and others. And the hope center for college community and justice at temple university now has a report on five years of evidence on basic needs. And could you help bring us up to speed about the data says and how the data

Clare Cady:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. First off, just quick shout out to Michigan State, one of the first campus pantries in the country. And my colleague who was my co-founder at the Food Bank Alliance was the grad student running that food bank when we got started in 2010.

Keith Edwards:
Well let’s give them a real shout out. Who was that? Who is that?

Clare Cady:
Nate Smith-Tyge. Probably not listening, but now that I’ve called, name-checked him, I’ll make sure he does. So anyway and and so, yeah, I mean, I think that we have, we have, now, what I would say is a pretty strong body of evidence for the fact that students are experiencing these issues. As, as Kim mentioned, there are a lot of people out there that are you know, we kind of laugh and roll our eyes a little bit, but hey, finally, welcome to the party, right? Like if COVID is what got you here, then COVID, it’s what got you here. But we, we have been looking at this issue for, you know you know, a very long time. We do have five years now of data from this real college survey. That’s initially started at the Wisconsin Hope Lab, and it’s now at the Hope Center at Temple.

Clare Cady:
And what we’re seeing, you know, is 39% of respondents to these surveys have been food insecure in the last 30 days, 46% had been housing insecure in the previous year. And 17% of respondents had been homeless. And I think, you know, as I was looking at that, I was just sort of refreshing and looking at that data today. One of the things that I was reflecting on is the fact that I feel like the numbers have really stabilized in some ways, like initially when we started seeing this research, you know, it was anywhere from like 15% in this study to like 63% over here in this study. And, you know, people didn’t really want to believe what they were seeing. They were questioning the tools, they were questioning the people. And I think what we’re really seeing at this point is a body of work that, that says, yes, in fact, this is an issue.

Clare Cady:
Yes. In fact, this is impacting students. And we can drill down on what that means in terms of like who’s being impacted more were disproportionately. But it is certainly something that needs to be addressed in higher education because the numbers are higher than our, that our national population, like there are more food insecure college students than there are food insecure people in the general population. So we have a lot of big questions we need to be asking about what does it mean to be in college? What does it mean to help students be successful in college?

Keith Edwards:
Well, and I want you to say a little bit more about that, because is that mean that are those percentages of the respondents? Is that a representative sample? So are those the percentages of college students in general? And, and I’d love, I don’t want to ask you two questions, but I’m going to do it. So that’s one question and then the other one is as the data stabilizes, I see this in lots of places because we get better and we get better questions, right. We sort of agree, and we’re not measuring lots of different things is that’s what’s happening.

Clare Cady:
I mean, I think we’ve been consistently measuring year to year. The, the real college survey has been fine tuned and fielded over the course of now, you know while I’m assuming that they’re probably fielding it again this year, we’re going to get six, seven, hopefully 10 years of data over time to continue to look at the issue and not just look at what the issue is, but maybe how our efforts are impacting that issue. That would be my, my long-term hope. But I would say that you know, the, like we’re consistently getting the same types of data. These are not representative samples. These are campuses that sign up to participate in the survey on an annual basis. They feel that survey to the best of their ability. The hope center does not charge them for this. So shout out to them for like really working hard to fund this type of research and make it, make it accessible for campuses to participate. This report that we’re talking about today, this five years report, there are individual reports for all of the years. They’re also putting out reports by state. They’re putting out reports by like system. So there’s a lot of information and data out there to take a look at and you can look at it in a lot of varied forms. And I feel like I just addressed the first of your questions.

Keith Edwards:
Well, yeah, about the representative sample, and then you also talked about that too, about I think we’re getting some consistent definitions and consistent naming. We’re not going off in lots of different directions as sort of researchers are looking what other folks are doing.

Clare Cady:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I want to say it was 2013. I published a piece in the Journal of College and Character that was effectively a literature review on what we knew at the time. And that’s when I say, I, you know, there was a study that said 15% and there was a study that said 63% and some of these were individual campuses and some of these were systems and they had all used different methodologies and in some ways different definitions of what they were considering, food insecure. And so, you know, our measurements and our tools are much better. And I think the data we’re getting is much better. And, you know, this is one example. I mean, Ruben’s team has done an amazing job of doing research on the issue in California. And if you see and there, the CSU system has done amazing research and work here too.

Clare Cady:
So the, this is one I think incredible example of where our numbers are stabilizing, but we’re seeing this in a lot of other studies where people are also measuring this. So like, I feel very, very confident that if someone were to come at us and say, this isn’t an issue you know, we no longer well, but we are dealing with college presidents who were saying students, aren’t food insecure, they’re food, anxious, they have food anxiety because they don’t want to believe it. And maybe they want to use mental health stigma to write it away, but we’re dealing much more with you know, strong evidence.

Keith Edwards:
Right. Thanks for that. And thanks for the segue to Ruben. But before we do that, I want to let folks know we’re going to put a link to this this report on the five years and the research, we’ll put a link to that in our show notes. So people who want to get that can get to that Ruben, I want to better understand this problem and how it came to be. It seems to me, my assumption is that this has been an issue before, and we’re seeing a combination of the issue getting more and the awareness of it getting more. Is that right?

Ruben Canedo:
Yeah, that’s exactly right. And I think for me something that that is helpful is to make it as conversational as possible. And I don’t wanna, I don’t want to lose on the invitation that naturally came up in the conversation about, there are some incredibly influential, powerful enough authoritative figures like chancellors, vice chancellors, presidents, VPs, elected officials who will say stuff like no folks aren’t hungry. No folks are not insecure. No folks are not struggling. And I think that that harm needs to be contained. It needs to be understood that when you are someone that says, no, you are not hungry to a person that is telling you that they are hungry. No, you are not homeless to a person that doesn’t have a place to go. That’s not just harmful from an academic research, freedom of speech, but that is direct harm that is being caused onto a person.

Ruben Canedo:
And I’m so happy that now, you know, we’re in a new presidency, there’s going to be a numeric, moral compass, ethical compass language, culture environment, so on and so forth because harm was permissible for so many years prior. And we don’t need to go there. But I think just for now, I do want to lift that to say for our folks, for our community that is listening and that may have a supervisor, a vice chancellor, chancellor president, so on and so forth, that is presenting that harmful behavior. We need to understand that as harm, that is not freedom of speech. That is not intellectual engagement. That is something that is causing direct harm to people, real people in that conversation. So to understand the problem, the way that we understand why is this happening is because most folks don’t know that the way that you pay your way through college varies depending how many resources you have available to yourself.

Ruben Canedo:
The wealthiest folks have always been able to pay their way through college and are going to continue to, but to pay their way through college because they are wealthy, right? There is a whole system that lifts them in a privilege ways that allows them to navigate education, private or public in a way that their resources allow them to do so, but not everybody’s in that circumstance. There’s folks that require work and to earn money. So folks who working is not enough. So they have access to financial aid, taking out loans to be able to supplement the work and taking out loans to pay for what they need to pay for. The problem here is that we are at a four decade purchasing power, low of the federal aid that is available to people that are eligible for that federal aid. And when you look at the state contribution to public education, state contribution has fluctuated and sadly it’s fluctuated downwards.

Ruben Canedo:
So there’s less federal, there’s less state. And then you add back to back break of capitalism in terms of the recession of 2008. And now this COVID pandemic. Yeah. So when you put those factors of less federal aid, fluctuated, state resources, and major economic crises, the generation of college students in these last, you know, 10, 20 years, it has had the least amount of support from our federal farm, our state government, yet they are experiencing the highest cost of living ever. I mean, just, just to, just to share a funny story, I went grocery shopping this weekend and the person right behind me ran into somebody that they knew. And they’re like, Oh my God. So good to see you here. Hey, I heard that you’re starting to get into your college thing is like, yeah. You know, I’m trying to figure out I’m really struggling.

Ruben Canedo:
He’s like, well, why are you struggling? Isn’t there financial aid, and this is happening right behind me. And he was telling her, I don’t know why you’re struggling so much because when I went to college, like, like I had financial aid and, you know, and I worked at a grocery store and I was cool. Like I made my way. So let me know if you need me to like, hook you up with something like financial literacy or like, you know, I can, I can point you in the right direction and people that can teach you your money. And her first question was, do you mind me asking, like, how much did you pay for rent? Because that’s what I’m struggling the most. He’s like, Oh, I don’t know, like 300 bucks. And she was like 300 bucks. I have to pay $1,700 just for rent. And he, he literally stopped and told her, I am so sorry.

Ruben Canedo:
And I don’t know what else to say other than I am so sorry, because $1,700 was more than I had available to me, like over a semester. So the generational difference of the economic reality that we are in could not be more different for these students. So that’s why the problem is happening. This is not built for, for students today to be able to take care of their basic needs and be full-time students and be able to perform to their best of their abilities. It’s a systemic issue. We need to stop blaming students for not being able to navigate the system that was not built for them to have their basic needs met. And no one is teaching them anything about this. You don’t go to high school and learn about this. You get into college and you have to speak the college admissions language, financial aid language, the academic rigor, and take care of yourself. That’s how we’re standing the problem.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah, I really appreciate it because I think that many of us know one, or maybe two of these factors, but you’re really talking about it is the federal aid going down dramatically. It is the cost of college going up because it’s more expensive to do this. State aid going down dramatically and cost of living going up and then the COVID pandemic. And, and we’re still feeling the effects of the 2008 recession. I think one of the things we often see is that if you have resources, you can not only weather the ups and downs of a recession. You can make money on it. If you don’t have resources, you just get devastated by it and may not be able to bounce back. So I think many of us are still experiencing what happened then and after effects. And of course, now this I do want to talk a little bit about COVID it certainly hasn’t helped. How has, how has what we’re seeing now exacerbated this and what are the things that you’re, you’re seeing you know, California is unique, but it’s also massive in, so some ways it’s very unique from, from the rest of the U S and other ways that it’s a bellwether. What are you seeing?

Ruben Canedo:
Yeah, absolutely. Great question. So I think so I want to connect two things in terms of that, as we’re getting to know the data, as we’re sharing this and the experiences and the context, it’s also, it’s also important to remind ourselves that the students are having to take the exact same classes. They have to perform through the exact same rigor. Like we don’t hook up like our low-income students, knowing that they have to work three jobs that week for that midterm, they don’t get a special midterm. They don’t get a special final. So there are students who don’t have to worry about their basic needs. And then there are students who are in perpetual survival mode. And I think that’s where we go into the whole mental health, the holistic wellness of it, because you’re soma – your mind, heart body is having a fundamental different experience through college when you’re having to be in survival more than when you don’t.

Ruben Canedo:
So add COVID to that, right? Add COVID to like, you were already in survival mode, and now you put a global pandemic. Now you’re not just poor or working class or struggling with your basic needs. You’re having to do all of that while there’s a global pandemic where like every week feels like a year and every week there’s a change in like policies, protocols, resources, people get COVID. So the place that you go for your food distribution got shut down. Now, where do you get food? And maybe your basic needs center on campus got shut down because of whatever reason, then they got shut down. So the safety net that is barely there now is being like burned, cut, pulled, stretched, whatever you want to call it through this COVID pandemic. So the specific college student experience was resources changed because of COVID. And you have want to think about a disability lens of this moment, because there’s folks who are immunocompromised.

Ruben Canedo:
There are folks who their bodies are shaped in a way where the society makes them be disabled and things are not built for them. So even when they’re trying to show up and get support, like it’s either do I risk my life or do I get the food that I need to eat? Those are the real circumstances and the day-to-day life of some of our students, because again, not everybody’s experiencing the same way. The other thing is that it’s phenomenal. How, when you go into a remote setting, you really learn where students feel a sense of safety, because some of them stayed and we made it seem like everybody left colleges. Some of them didn’t have anywhere to go. When we say, Hey, students go shelter in place. Excuse me, I don’t have a shelter to begin with. And what is this place you’re talking about?

Ruben Canedo:
And actually, if I go anywhere else, I don’t have access to health services or to food, or to fundamental things that I need to be able to just survive as a human being. And you want me to also submit all these assignments and take these midterms and take these finals? No, none of that works. So that’s, that’s what some, some color to the conversation, if you will. The last thing to share is that it’s really phenomenal. What Clare said earlier, some folks are now getting it. They’re like, Whoa, basic needs are real. You know why? Because it’s impacting them for the first time, the working, working middle working upper, the upper class folks that are now experiencing some real harm, some real tensions, some real difficulties that global pandemic put them in. Now the conversation has amplified beyond the people that are in the hierarchy of human value, that we feel comfortable and normed struggling with their basic needs, which is powerful because we need everybody at all times. So how do we organize and mobilize with all of these folks together? Because we need to bring folks together. This moment is a portal in the better direction that we need to go.

Keith Edwards:
All right. Oh, I think the other thing is then the thing that was coming to mind that you did mention, you mentioned so much is also worrying about loved ones who probably are also lacking resources, whether they’re immune compromised or don’t have also don’t have place to shelter or they’re older and that’s just more, or they’re dying or it’s just more, more, not just my survival, but also my loved one’s survival. We want to open up this conversation. We’re going to go to Clare. We’re going to go to you first on this one and we’ll chime in, but we’ve already talked about so many of them about the intersecting with systems of oppression, both beyond our institutions, right? The society and the world that we live in, but also within our institutions. So what are some of the things you’re seeing there?

Clare Cady:
Yeah, I mean, I think Ruben, you know, talked about this sort of the, the fact that colleges are not designed for some people, right? But by design, our campuses are for people with money, people who are white able-bodied generally male or male presenting and who come from families that have education that speak a certain way. You know, that was what our initial colleges and universities were in this country, as they were being built. That’s what our land grant institutions were. And, and that’s what our community colleges were all designed in that image. And so when we talk about the fact that people are now coming to the party and realizing these are issues you know, I’m going to put myself in that same category. When the recession hit, I lost my job. I got a job working on a campus addressing basic needs.

Clare Cady:
That was when I realized as after I’d signed on the dotted line, that this in fact was an issue on my campus. As I’m talking to people about it, people who have worked in this big community colleges or people of color people who maybe have experienced these things when I was in college or before I was in college, as long as people have been, there have been colleges to go to, people have struggled and sacrificed and, you know, to be there the by design, they have not necessarily always been able to access college. And as we continue to make college, quote, unquote, more accessible, what we aren’t doing is once someone gets in making sure they can stay and it’s not, and they put it on the individual, which is what Ruben is talking. So when we’re talking about basic needs, if we look at just basic needs data, how housing and food insecurity numbers in this country, we’re disproportionately talking about people of color.

Clare Cady:
We are disproportionately talking about you know, LGBTQ people who are gender non-conforming, people who are transgender. We’re talking about you know, people coming from underserved communities. We’re talking about people coming from places where their families don’t have money. We’re talking about first gen students. You know, we’re talking about students that can’t go to the campus on the land that was stolen from their ancestors, right? So like, you know, when we, when we think about this work and we really want to talk about it, we have to talk about how our institutions are literally designed to fail these students. And it’s one of the reasons this basic needs work is so challenging is because it literally exposes all of this by design ways in which these students are systematically kept out. And when they come in, they’re not, there’s not an effort to understand the needs.

Clare Cady:
They have to keep them in. When I was doing this work directly on a college campus, the number of times I was told one of two things either we are not social workers, so we shouldn’t be doing this work. And Kim’s like, yeah, I’ve had that. I’ve had that too. I’m sure Ruben has heard that as well. The other, so we’re not social workers, it’s not our responsibility. That is a really, really like telling statement. Right. And then the other one is, you know, if they, maybe they should just stop out and come back, right. And the recognition that, you know, we want to get you in, we want to take your dollars, but there’s no refund if you drop out, right. There’s no refund. If you drop out, you, you leave with debt and no degree, and you’re worse off than, than the first place. And, and another, I think layer on top of all of this is this desire to be more diverse, right? We wanna recruit diverse populations. You put Black students on the front page of our campus website, right. If you want to look like we’re so inclusive and amazing, and we recruit, recruit, recruit, and we do nothing once we get them through the door. And so it’s actually in some ways damaging to these student populations further in the name of looking good, getting money. Et cetera.

Keith Edwards:
Kim, what do you want to add to that?

Kim Steed-Page:
Yeah, first, I just want to add that it’s so wonderful to be amongst my people, as Clare is talking and Ruben is talking, you know, its things that I’ve seen, you know, I’m newer into the, you know, looking at the entire university and trying to get folks, you know, we’ve been doing things on such a scale with Michigan State being, you know, 50,000 it’s very siloed. And it has, is very much a struggle for students to navigate. And the expectation that the student navigate the systems on their own. And I’m also really thinking about the importance of trauma and an awareness of trauma and using a trauma informed approach to working with students, you know, I’ve had faculty or the staff say, well, I told them what time to come to the meeting. And they didn’t, you know, they didn’t return my email or they didn’t show up.

Kim Steed-Page:
So they had their chance. And so maybe they need to consider a withdrawal from school, you know, particularly around Title IX, for example, many the focus rightfully so with Title IX has been on sexual assault, which at 100%, yes, but many folks don’t know that there’s a portion of Title IX that protects pregnant and parenting students. And so when we think about what COVID did also childcare, you know, so childcare as a is incredibly expensive, you know, in, in the state of Michigan and Michigan is I think second and the country to the highest daycare rates and full-time infant care is about $13,000 per year. You know, undergraduate tuition at Michigan State is about between 12 and 14,000, depending where you are. So you’re, you’re looking at full-time daycare for an infant or a toddler, a child who’s still diapering to really be cost prohibitive. So when you think about the ability to free up your cash to pay for childcare, you know, what are campuses doing to support on campus childcare? So what COVID did also was faculty and staff have been impacted by childcare because when the childcare centers were closed and many still are, or have reduced their numbers, student, parents, as an example, as well as staff and faculty then had to figure out what to do.

Kim Steed-Page:
I feel like this is a welcome to the party moment, right?

Kim Steed-Page:
Yes. 100% welcome to the party moment. So, you know, when we think about looking at the unique needs and being willing to admit that students are not being served in the way that they need to be served, although we’ve encouraged them to co to come, and we have to really think about educating the whole student, whatever they come with and whatever they pick up along the way while they’re here. And I think that that’s something that universities historically have not done a good job at there. We’re excited to have you, but, you know, you need to figure it out. You need to be successful on your own. And that’s just really not possible for all the reasons that Ruben and Clare you know, mentioned previously,

Keith Edwards:
Well, let’s move, shift our conversation before we have to wrap up here we’ve really outlined the problem we’ve out. We’ve defined it. We’ve talked about all the factors. We’ve talked about the intersection with oppression, all of these things that are how we got here and what’s going on, which is so helpful. And I really appreciate your collective insight and clarity and conciseness about explaining this. What are some of the best things you see happening out there? What is working in addressing this? What are some of the approaches that you see emerging that you wish would spread like wildfire? I think so many people are going to be listening to this inspired and motivated. Maybe they’re new to the party, as you’re saying, or maybe they’re connecting with it in a new way, but if that’s where they are, how can they be helpful? What can really help move the needle? And Kim we’ll start with you.

Kim Steed-Page:
Yeah, thanks. So, you know, a few things that I have seen and been doing research on, you know, I just want to say having folks on from California, because we really started our work looking at California’s model and UC Berkeley in particular, when we were, you know, trying to figure out the issues to address on campus and how, how might we as a campus go about addressing you know, food insecurity in support of the student food bank. But how do we go beyond that as we’re looking at looking at food and, you know, there’s some very, what I would call simple, easy things that I’m seeing happening in many different universities within the residence halls. For us, for example, at Michigan State, they just piloted a program where students could donate a swipe from their you know, meal card where we can essentially bank meals for students.

Kim Steed-Page:
And so that when a student is connected, you know, with their advisor or with, you know, somebody that through a channel can just have the meal put on their card, it’s, you know, a way to offer, you know, privacy and respect. They would swipe their card the same way. Any other student with seems, it’s a very small and easy thing that is proven to be effective because students who have this unlimited meal plans are a hundred meals a week. Food is being wasted and it’s not being used. And there’s no reason that we shouldn’t be implementing something to make sure that those folks who don’t have meal plans or who live off campus can come to campus to access food. With regards to childcare is an issue department of education has a grant program called C campus is childcare access means parents in schools.

Kim Steed-Page:
It’s a program for low-income student, parents who qualify, can receive free or low cost childcare while they’re in school or working. There are many community colleges and universities across the country. MSU is one of the recipients of that grant. So we’re able to provide childcare assistance, which then frees up because you hear a lot of, Oh, well, they’re going to max out on their financial aid. They’re going to do, you know, that financial aid barrier you know, some universities have been able to find a workaround around the limitations around financial aid and with the C campus grant is one of those that students, financial aid is not impacted. So, you know, one of the problems with scholarships right, is that oftentimes student gets a scholarship, but their financial aid package is reduced. So it’s really not helping them, you know, in the long-term, maybe they have less of a loan, right.

Kim Steed-Page:
But it’s not helping them in real time. So, you know, those are a couple of things that I’ve seen. And then also some States are have expanded college students access to snap benefits, which I think is really important in terms of filling a gap. You know, when we think about opt in Michigan in particular students have been disadvantaged but if they are enrolled full-time, they’re not qualifying for snap or very little to the point that it’s not really helping them. So there’ve been some changes in Michigan and in many other States that have increased students’ access to that, especially it was happening pre COVID. They expanded during COVID times right now. And the advocacy and hope is that that will continue beyond you know, kind of the COVID atmosphere, because those are some of the few things that I think are really promising.

Kim Steed-Page:
Yeah. I love that you’re sharing things people can do at the campus policy level, state level, and then federal level and how all of these things work together. Clare, what else would you add that you see as really promising out there?

Clare Cady:
I mean, I would say beyond promising it’s getting effect is the work that Ruben and his, his folks in California are doing like, it is tremendously powerful. The systemic work Ruben has been doing this for a very long time. And it has the, you know, they have built out in California, a systematic, systemic, not just a bunch of centers. They’re not just putting campus pantries in a bunch of places. You know, they are, they’ve gone beyond, you know, giving a food box. They’ve gone beyond even having a, a boutique space on campus. The students can go and, you know, get some help. You know, they’re, they’re building out, you know, a body of evidence of data. They’re shifting policy, they’re shifting and they’re shifting state policy. It’s students who move among colleges in California are going to find not necessarily always the exact standard of care in every single institution, but that’s what they’re moving towards.

Clare Cady:
So that students get consistent experiences and consistent levels of support. You know, and, and there is a shift in de-stigmatizing and making it much more like this is what it means to be a student here. And so like, if you want an example of something on a really huge systems level, that’s, I wouldn’t say it’s a, it’s a promising practice. It’s a successful practice that is getting results. And, and I always want to give a shout out if you want to talk about an individual campus. Doing amazing work is Amarillo college in Amarillo, Texas. They have built out a kind of community based systematic way of addressing poverty and recognizing the connection between their community and their community college and what it means to serve people on the campus and help students be successful, means everyone in their community is successful. And so, you know, shout out to the folks at Amarillo College as well. Those are two places. They’re not just promising practices. They are successful strategies.

Keith Edwards:
This is really great. What a great segue Ruben, if you ever need to take a stage and need someone to hype you up before you take the stage, I think we just found out who you should call. I mean that was fantastic.

Clare Cady:
I will be there for you any day You know that.

Keith Edwards:
Clare has pointed to some of the great things you’re doing. I’d love for you to add briefly any more you want to add to that, but I’d love for others who think – how? What are the hows that you’ve done in California that you think others should replicate? What, or what have you learned about the strategy?

Ruben Canedo:
Yeah, absolutely. And, and there’s only love and abundance here. So, so I think that in itself is an affirmation that in this space and this area, the culture of higher ed is changing the, the leaders the individualization, the competition over community, the, the, I want to be the best and therefore no one should know what I’m doing. And I’m gonna, you know, all of that is, is out the way here. And I think for me, California sounds really big until you come to California and that you realize that there are 58 different counties that might as well be States of their own, and their realities are across the spectrum. Like you said, Keith earlier today in the podcast. So I want to de-romanticize California and to let folks know that if you want to go to a hyper privileged space, you will find it in California.

Ruben Canedo:
And we’re also the number one poverty ranked state in the country. And people don’t think about poverty when they think about California, that’s a problem that lets you know, how powerful culture and Hollywood and media are that we’ve been trained and conditioned that when you think of California, you think of wealth and millionaires and billionaires and beautiful weather, unless you don’t say California, and you say something like Oakland, or you say something like competent, then it’s a very different immediate switch that happens. So I just want to name that and acknowledge that. And also to live, to say the, how tos and effective practices. Number one, you’d be surprised how much we need more organizing in this effort. We need folks that are willing to organize, to bring people in, to call people in, to facilitate and to build relationships so that we can get to the point of trusting each other and supporting one another.

Ruben Canedo:
In our efforts, we don’t do that enough in higher ed, we have very superficial, very selfish, very greedy based relationships that are driving the culture of higher ed. So we need that counterculture. We need that balance. We need emergent strategies, generative, somatics, healing, justice. We need to intervene at that soul level. We need to turn the soil of higher ed and say, we’re not going to out publish our way from trauma and systems of oppression, but we will heal and relation I relational ship center ourselves and to making progress relationships and healing were get us to places. So I want to call people to say, what’s going on in your campus? Who are your relationships? Who are you moving with? How do you invite folks to the conversation? And once you put the folks in the conversation, the right conversation is there. You just need to find it. That’s a sacred Emergent Strategy practice for those folks that have not read Emergent Strategies, just bringing that wisdom to you all. I think that’s number one, bring the people

Keith Edwards:
Interject real quick, right there. I also want to tie what you’re pointing to, to what Kim was sharing. How do we organize at the campus and the community level? And then join with other campuses and organize at the state level and then join with others and organize at the national because Kim was pointing to possibilities at each level of these. Thank you for letting me your interrupt. Keep going.

Ruben Canedo:
Yeah. So I think that’s number one that how like bring folks together, whatever is accessible to you. Cause I know some folks are overwhelmed by some levels and underwhelmed by others, but we need to understand, we need us everywhere. Y’all everywhere. We need us in the campuses and the city services and the County services and the States areas, wherever you can bring folks in, we need medicine and we need movement everywhere because it’s systemic. The second thing that I would do is I really want to lift these research efforts. Anyone that’s listening right now, if you Google UC Info Center – Basic Needs, you’re going to get our dashboard and it’s open source democratic. And it’s been going on since 2016 and it’s not just the frequency rates of food insecurity, housing insecurity and homelessness. It’s also the experiential piece. What does mental health in terms of anxiety, depression, how much time do have to study?

Ruben Canedo:
How much do I have to work to survive? What are the graduation rates of the students? Because sometimes we need to speak the language of the university and I want to make it very clear to all of us that are listening to this podcast. Basic needs is definitely a factor in access and affordability and persistence and performance. And in graduation rates, everything that we say our success metric system of higher education is absolutely shaped by basic needs. So folks that still don’t understand that are getting in their own way. Yeah. You’d be surprised how many meetings we’ve had with administers where like, I don’t have time for this basic needs conversation. I need to get more students into tutoring. I’m like, what do you think are, or like, I don’t need to talk about this opening up this basic needs center. I need students to get higher grades. What do you think is preventing them from being able to get those higher grades or when they get real intense or like Ruben, I’m just going to be honest with you. And I already know what that means. And then they’ll say something like, and I don’t want to sound problematic, which means you’re about to make a problematic statement.

Ruben Canedo:
Because where are all of the black people where all of the Brown people, where all of the queers where out of the disabled and they just start naming categories because what’s up with their graduation rates and why aren’t they getting higher grades? I’m like, well, if you would’ve paid attention to the data, look, who’s hungry. Look who’s without housing, local has issues with their health care, copays, mental health, it’s all of these communities. And you’re asking me about grades showing up to class and graduating. I’m giving you the answer, right? When we start doing this, then everything else will start moving in a healthier and more sustainable and better way. Right?

Keith Edwards:
And we’re really talking about this as a root cause of a lot of the things that are really troubling. So really, really important. We are, unfortunately out of time we knew this was gonna happen so much good stuff, but before we let you all go, I just real quick, we call this podcast student affairs now. So we just want to hear what’s just 15, 30 seconds. What’s the thing that you’re thinking about that now. And that might be like lately in this work, it might be the thing you’re thinking about right now after this conversation. So let’s maybe go to Kim and then Clare and then Ruben. What’s the thing that you’re really with right now, Kim.

Kim Steed-Page:
Great question. So the thing I’m really with right now is really making sure to take a look at who is missing from the conversation. So particularly at Michigan State, who aren’t seeing, where’s everyone going, everyone’s talking about persistence and retention who is missing from that conversation. And when we see who’s not accessing supports and looking at those rates, we’re answering in our own questions and finding those needs. So bringing those folks who are missing, bringing them to the forefront.

Keith Edwards:
Awesome. Who’s missing great. Clare?

Clare Cady:
I mean, I I’m always asking the question what works, right? Like, you know, we, we have been, they all kind of, there’s been a concerted effort to come up with ways to address this. And a lot of things that are being tried. And I think it’s not what we’re like. One thing we know that if I give a student food, they’re going to be better off. Right? Like I think we know that, but I want to know like where, what do we have to provide? What is the actual like wraparound support gonna look like? What does that is actually going to work? Because I need to be able to give the business case to the VP, the CFO, to the trustees, because I want them to take this seriously. And as Ruben is saying, you know, there, there has a translational gap and in a lot of ways, it is the business case. And so I want to know what works and I want to know to what level it works so that I can make that case in the language of the people that have the money and the access. And so that, that they can really be taking this seriously and recognizing that we actually have the same set of goals, it’s that we’re looking at them differently.

Keith Edwards:
Right? Fantastic. Ruben what’s what’s on you right now.

Ruben Canedo:
I think that the two things that are present with me is number one is how do we take better care of each other and everyone, the culture of higher ed needs to change? I think, I think we’re burning people out. I think we are, I think we’re harming people in higher education because the culture is publicly very like progressive, but internally hyper capitalistic survival of the fit is hierarchical like that kind of environment. And that creates a cognitive dissonance that we’re trying to be very progressive, but operating incredibly oppressive. I’ll just leave that there. The second thing is that I really want to lift to folks that we need to go beyond the savior complex that we think because we bring a black administrator to campus or because we bring a land next administrator to campus, or because the person that is my new boss is disabled or or what have you, that they will single-handedly come and change everything and make everything better. And we need to stop that. We need to realize that all of us have to come together. If we’re trying to move this institution, the system and this culture towards belonging, equity, and justice, those are the two offerings.

Keith Edwards:
Wow. Well, thank you. Thank you all so much. You’ve been wonderful guests who helped us really understand this issue or help really get underneath it and also give us great things about how we can better address it. Thanks to all of you for helping us understand this critical issue for higher ed and beyond. As we wrap up, we want to remind our listeners, you can receive reminders about this and other episodes by subscribing to the student affairs now, newsletter or browse the archives at StudentAffairsNow.com. Thanks to our sponsor today. Anthology formerly Campus Labs, please subscribe to the podcast, invite others to subscribe, share on social, leave a five star review. It really does help conversations like this. Reach more folks and build a community so we can continue to make this free for all of you. Again, I’m Keith Edwards. Thanks again to the fabulous guests today and to everyone who is watching and listening, make it a great week. Thank you all.