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At the Vineyard Church in Westcott, the Saturday morning food pantry, as always, divided its patrons.

On the lower floor, attendees sat on either side of a long hallway, waiting for volunteers to call their number. Some wrangled young children or chatted with intake workers, while those who already received food sorted their items into bags that they carried out into an unseasonably warm spring day.

Up a set of stairs, the second group, composed largely of Syracuse University international students, gathered in a well-lit space overlooking the church’s sanctuary. They sat around tables, studying and sipping coffee to the sound of 2010s pop music as they waited their turn to access the pantry.

The international students — all of them attending a university that will charge a record-high $61,310 in tuition next year — make up a large share of the pantry’s clientele. As many as 150 of them cycle through the church’s doors every week, according to Vineyard Church Syracuse lead pastor Chris Honess, picking up necessities they’d otherwise struggle to afford.

Meghan Hendricks | Senior Staff Photographer

The divide between the pantry’s waiting areas is a practical one, said Jean Holm, the Westcott site pastor. The groups have different needs, she said, and the students have a much easier time climbing the stairs compared to the many elderly attendees from the general community.

But the split also underscores a deeper reality of hunger in Syracuse: how food insecurity resonates differently in each community it touches, and how stark need can persist in the shadow of a university with a $1.81 billion endowment.

Honess, whose church manages three other food pantries in the Syracuse area, finds that level of need troubling.

“How does this work,” Honess asked in a recent interview with The Daily Orange, “that we’re not taking care of our students?”

Challenges on arrival

Chrish David Douglas knows the first semester is always a struggle.

It’s a challenge Douglas said many international students like him face when moving to Syracuse. They arrive at SU with little to no money, and whatever non-U.S. currency they might have is likely devalued by an uneven exchange rate. They find themselves lost, navigating both an unfamiliar culture and a perilous financial situation. And until they can land a campus job — or two, or three — they have to save as much as possible to afford food and rent.

“First semester, I used to think twice before buying a bag of chips,” said Douglas, a graduate student from India in SU’s School of Information Studies.

Meghan Hendricks | Senior Staff Photographer

The Westcott neighborhood’s relatively cheap rents and proximity to campus are a draw, Douglas said, so international students — particularly graduate students — often settle there. Eventually, many find their way to the Vineyard Church pantry.

The pantry provides a vital source of relief, he said — one less expense for students to pay as they find their footing in a new country and search for a stable source of income.

“That’s why people start working on-campus jobs, at least two to three campus jobs, because they need to cover their expenses,” said Douglas, who also volunteers at the Vineyard Westcott pantry. For him, he said, “after getting a campus job, the tension went away.”

“The second semester is when (international students) don’t have as much to worry about,” said Jay Ganatra, another international student and friend of Douglas.

The two of them sat at a table in the church’s student waiting space, which had largely emptied out as the Saturday morning distribution window wound down. Nearly 90 students had already come through the pantry’s doors that day.

Though things become easier once students find work, the pantry still provides an important safety net, Ganatra and Douglas said.

The needs and preferences of the international students differ from those of the wider community, Holm said. Many come to the pantry for just the essentials and avoid processed foods, while other attendees seek greater variety for themselves or their children.

“Mainly what we need is the bread, and the milk, and the eggs,” Douglas said. “Because that is what we can go with the whole day.”

Different needs

The month of March brought a new wave of food insecurity to Syracuse, when pandemic-era SNAP benefits ended and tens of thousands of residents’ food budgets cratered. That includes the lower-floor patrons at Vineyard Church Westcott, Holm said, where in April the pantry tracked an uptick of 20 to 30 new attendees per week.

The same trend hasn’t played out among the SU international students, who are largely excluded from government nutrition programs due to citizenship requirements. Because of this, the demand among that group has remained more constant, Holm said, continuing to follow the rhythm of the academic year.

That doesn’t mean that the students’ needs, though different from the general community’s, aren’t serious, the Vineyard Church pastors said. The pantry also hosts a clothing drive for international students, since they often arrive unprepared for the Syracuse winters and don’t always have the money to buy jackets.

Meghan Hendricks | Senior Staff Photographer

Food insecurity among the broader SU student community has been a persistent challenge, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. The university operates two pantries — one in Hendricks Chapel and another on South Campus — that together serve 100-150 students per week. Those pantries are a 25- and 40-minute walk from the Westcott neighborhood, respectively.

“Though we do not track the demographics of Pantry users, we know that, anecdotally, many are international graduate students,” a spokesperson for Hendricks Chapel said in a statement to The D.O.

Whether food insecurity is more prevalent for the international student community than for American SU students isn’t clear. But one thing is: this fall, international students will likely arrive in Westcott without food or the money to buy it. Many will have to scrape by for weeks or months before finding work, forced to choose between getting groceries and paying rent.

Without other options, several will find their way to the open doors at Vineyard Church.

“Everyone has a struggle in the first month,” Douglas said. “Everyone will have it (when they arrive at SU), because you don’t know what to do.”

Published on May 25, 2023 at 8:43 pm

Contact Chris: [email protected]