Creating and Institutionalizing a College Food Pantry: Activism, Partnerships, and Volunteer Labor

Abstract

While campus food pantries are growing increasingly popular as an intervention aimed at improving student retention, little work has examined what it takes to start and maintain these resources on the ground. We leverage data from 17 interviews with pantry leaders, and social media posts and internal documents, to describe the creation and institutionalization of the Grove Grocery at the University of Mississippi. Findings confirm the role of collaborative partnerships, the benefits of advisors serving as liaisons between student leaders and administrators, and the challenges of institutionalization within the higher education context, including university hesitancy, reliance on uncompensated student labor, lack of resource awareness, and stigma surrounding food insecurity.