Penn Dining partnered with Swipe Out Hunger to host a meal-swipe donation drive on Nov. 17, allowing students to help support food access efforts nationwide.
The semesterly meal swipe drive took place at 1920 Commons and gave students the opportunity to donate up to five unused meal swipes which will be used to provide short-term meal support to students facing food insecurity. Nearly 900 meal swipes were donated, according to Hospitality Services University Engagement Coordinator Ray Franckewitz.
“We’re grateful to the student leaders of the Swipe Out Hunger organization for their partnership, and we appreciate everyone who took part and their ongoing engagement with this longstanding initiative,” Franckewitz wrote in a statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian.
Swipe Out Hunger is a national non-profit organization that collects unused meal swipes from students with more than 900 partner organizations across the country.
College senior Janine Haros, one of the student organizers for the drive, told the DP that seeing food access and food insecurity problems on campus inspired her involvement with the initiative.
“It’s more prevalent than some people realize, and it’s something that a lot of people can help with,” Haros said.
Many of the students who donated their meal swipes at the event shared similar sentiments with the DP.
“I donated swipes because I think it’s important to give back to our community, and I have extra swipes that I’m not going to use,” Nursing first-year Alex Blank said. “I think it’s a great cause and a good way to use the swipes that I do have.”
College first-year Brady Woodhouse added that the drive is especially important “at a time when a lot of people are about to lose or have already lost their SNAP benefits.”
Haros mentioned that while many students “really resonated” with the event, some were hesitant to donate because they were unsure that they would have enough meal swipes to sustain themselves for the rest of the semester. To solve this problem, organizers implemented a “credit debit system” so that meal swipes would not be taken out of the system until the end of the semester, according to Haros.
“If a student, for instance, donated five, but at the end of the semester needed those five, they would be able to get those back,” Haros explained.
College sophomore Maggie Zheng expressed that while she felt the drive was a better alternative to the University “swallowing the money” from students’ unused swipes, she also believes Penn’s dining plan system is “unfair.”
“This institution has so much money, and if they really wanted to donate, they could donate themselves,” Zheng told the DP. “I don’t really feel like it’s fair to take money away from people that need it to help people that really need it.”
Zheng added that implementing a refund system — where unused swipes could be carried over to the next semester or converted into dining dollars — would be a better solution.
“Is [donating] really voluntary if the money is just going to be gone either way?” Zheng said. “If the money’s just going to be gone either way, you might as well just donate it, but if there was a case in which it could go back to the student, I feel like that would be better.”