After being delayed for a semester, the Spartan Food Pantry opened on Monday, providing free food to food-insecure students.
Current San Jose State students who are qualified can visit the pantry once a week to get fresh produce, non-perishables and other food.
The permanent food pantry is located in the Student Union, with an entrance across from the engineering rotunda.
It will be open 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. today, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Thursday, and 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Friday. The pantry will also be open over spring break, with specific hours posted on the SJSU Spartan Food Pantry website.
More than 150 students shopped at the pantry on Monday, said Marko Mohlenhoff, student affairs case manager for SJSU Cares.
SJSU is the second-to-last California State University campus to open a food pantry, said Ben Falter, senior student affairs case manager. “We’ve been working on this for years,” he said.
Falter said it took so long for SJSU to open the pantry because of a lack of space and funding. After securing initial grant funding, the university had its annual 2018 fundraiser gala contribute toward the pantry, he said.
The pantry was expected to open last semester. However, it had been delayed pending approval from the county fire marshal and county health department, Mohlenhoff said earlier this month.
SJSU Vice President of Finance and Administration Charlie Faas said, “[The pantry] is beyond what I was hoping it would be.”
Students must earn a gross annual income of $33,385 or less to qualify, though no documentation is required, according to the food pantry’s website.
“Virtually, every student ought to be eligible for this,” Mohlenhoff said.
The pantry is divided into six zones: produce, multiple use, cool zone, single use, toiletries and grab and go. Falter said that students will be encouraged to take food from the first two zones: produce and multiple use.
While the pantry won’t track exactly which foods individual students are taking, it will keep a record of the zones students are taking food from for tracking purposes, Falter said.
Shivanku Mahna, a computer science graduate student, said he was looking forward to the opening of the pantry.
“I really have high expectations of this. As an international student, I’m not too high on resources or money,” Mahna said. “Anything that’s free and of good quality doesn’t hurt.”
Mahna said he had been volunteering at and receiving food from the previous Just in Time mobile food pantries that happen once a month.
Students could get non-perishable foods at the mobile pantry, but it only happened once a month for an hour.
Falter said the permanent food pantry will allow them to give students a more personal experience.
He compared the single hour per month that the mobile food pantry was open to the 20 hours this week that the new Spartan Food Pantry is open.
Mohlenhoff said the Just in Time mobile food pantry will continue in April and May while they better understand how students use the new permanent pantry.
He encouraged any student facing food insecurity to use the pantry, and to take advantage of all resources available to them.
