Eleanor Ferrier of Pensacola has reached out to strangers on Reddit for help getting food. The 20-year-old music education senior at Florida A&M University frequents the school’s pantry twice a month, but her 30-minute electric-bike commute to campus doesn’t always go smoothly.
In early August, when heavy rain poured in Tallahassee and she couldn’t make it to FAMU Food Pantry without risking illness or ruining groceries, Ferrier created an Amazon wish list on an assistance subreddit, where her shopping list was fulfilled.
“There have been multiple times when I really only eat one meal a day, and that’s because I can only afford to eat one meal,” Ferrier said. “No one should be going hungry at all.”
Ferrier is among the many students going hungry across the nation. As the cost of living increases statewide, these students are paying the price, oftentimes by skipping meals. While universities have made efforts to combat the problem through on-campus food pantries and student-led initiatives, the Florida Legislature hasn’t succeeded in efforts to mitigate student hunger.
Roughly 1 in 6 Florida residents face hunger, with statewide food insecurity levels at 15.4%, slightly higher than the national level, according to Feeding America, a Chicago-based food bank network.
While no research has yet measured how many students enrolled in the Florida College System struggle with hunger, about 23% of undergraduate students nationwide experience food insecurity, according to a 2024 report from the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan congressional watchdog which analyzes federal survey data.
The state’s universities are among the most affordable in the country, with the lowest average yearly in-state tuition costs, but many of their students struggle to afford necessities as food prices nationwide were 2.5% higher in September than in the same month in 2025, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
State lawmakers have tried twice to create a “Hunger-Free Campus” pilot program, but both attempts stalled. In 2025, a House bill and its Senate companion died in the respective budget committees despite moving unanimously through earlier committees.
A 2026 Senate version met the same fate in March. That measure called for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to form hunger task forces at the three state universities or colleges with the highest share of Pell Grant-eligible students. The department also would have helped students at those institutions enroll in a supplemental nutrition assistance program and stocked food pantries on those campuses.
Most students enrolled at least half-time can’t receive SNAP, the federal food assistance program formerly known as food stamps, unless they qualify for an exemption, such as working 20 hours a week or holding a work-study job. The Government Accountability Office found that even among potentially eligible students, about two-thirds weren’t receiving benefits.
Patrick Healy, 21, a meteorology junior at Florida State, falls into the common middle-income gap. His parents earn too much for him to qualify for most need-based federal grants, yet they do not have the financial resources to cover the cost of his degree, he said.
Even combining his Walmart wages with a small amount of federal aid, Healy’s budget remains tight. Since moving to Florida from Pennsylvania for college, he said he has relied on a routine to manage hunger: Eating snacks and cereal at home and paying the $12 entry fee to a dining hall two to four times a week to eat as much as he can, oftentimes to the point of sickness.
“It was really tough when I started, but now, I don’t really know if it got easier,” Healy said. “I just got better at managing it.”
Healy hasn’t applied for government assistance like SNAP because the lengthy application process and income verification requirements are inconvenient for someone balancing full-time work and heavy coursework, he said.
Natalie Gonzalez, now a master’s student in FSU’s applied American politics program, led a student group to urge the Legislature to pass the “Hunger-Free Campus” bill last year. FSU selects its annual legislative priorities through a school-wide student survey; food insecurity scored high, so student leaders advocated for it during the 2025 legislative session.
“In the survey we have out right now, we have a lot of students who are still interested in it, so it’s clearly still a relevant topic,” said Gonzalez, 22, of Miami.
Advocacy around the bill catalyzed broader campus awareness and “good conversation,” prompting other student organizations to support FSU’s Food for Thought Pantry, she said.
The 2025 bill wasn’t the first attempt. Rep. Susan Valdés, R-Tampa, said student government leaders at the University of Central Florida prompted her to take the idea to Tallahassee. As a Democrat, before switching parties in 2024, she filed a Hunger-Free Campus grant bill in 2022 and a pilot-program version in 2023.
The 2023 bill cleared a House subcommittee before dying in an appropriations subcommittee. It stalled after the state university system’s Board of Governors argued that the legislation was redundant because most campuses already run food pantries, Valdés said.
Valdés concedes she was initially unaware of the prevalence of food insecurity among college students, and it “broke her heart” to hear about it, she said.
“When you’re hungry, you cannot study, you cannot function,” she said. “It was important to be able to ensure that they weren’t hungry so that they can study.”
A 2023 National Library of Medicine study found that food insecurity impacts a student’s physical health, mental well-being and academic performance. College students who experience food insecurity have higher levels of stress, lower GPAs and a lower chance of graduating compared to those who are food secure, according to researchers at the library and elsewhere.
Bernard Coleman, 21, an FSU marketing junior from Amelia Island, said he feels “brain fog” when he hasn’t eaten and is sometimes lightheaded at the gym or sluggish doing work.
Coleman said he visits the campus pantry several times a week. But he doesn’t always have time to do so, and hauling a bag of produce from class to class isn’t always practical. To fill the gaps, he said, he scans the university’s events calendar for anything likely to have free food — and eats snacks from FSU’s Center for Health, Advocacy and Wellness, where he works.
“I might get like a beef stick or something, if they have it,” Coleman said.
Campus markets like Valencia College’s VCentials at the Osceola campus in Kissimmee are working to meet students where they are.
Tahir Hamid, 18, a first-year accounting major from Orlando, works as a student leader at the food market, deliberately named “market” to avoid negative social stigma.
Hamid said he has distributed free food kits with items like microwaveable dumpling kits, juice boxes and raisins around campus to raise awareness. He also said that he appreciates how his manager positions the market as an everyday convenience stop for any hungry student.
“She tries to point out that it’s something for everyone,” he said. “In case you forget breakfast or something, you can stop for a granola bar and a juice box to hold you over until lunchtime.”
The Knights Helping Knights Pantry at UCF in Orlando has expanded its outreach beyond social media to tabling and speaking at club and campus events as part of its latest efforts to publicize the pantry and reduce stigma.
Management made several changes after a UCF master’s level communication class studying the pantry found that, while students rated it very positively, they said they were unlikely to use it themselves because of how it was branded, said Jeannie Kiriwas, the associate director in the dean of students office.
The course’s outcomes led the UCF pantry to drop “emergency” from its name and messaging, and make other wording changes, including calling students “shoppers” instead of “customers,” for greater inclusion.
“When you think of a customer, you think of a more transactional sort of relationship,” said Nancy Rubio, 21, a public administration senior from Broward County and the pantry’s manager. “They felt like that wasn’t necessarily something that they aligned with.”
Pantries provide relief where federal food aid doesn’t. At Santa Fe College’s Saints Food Share in Gainesville, demand spikes each fall and whenever SNAP benefits are cut, said pantry manager Brianna Shallenberger. The pantry grew after receiving a U.S. Department of Education Basic Needs for Postsecondary Students grant, and this semester it moved to PantrySoft, an online system where students schedule a pickup and choose their own items using points.
“Now we’re prioritizing client choice for the students,” Shallenberger said.
International students like William Bizotto dos Santos don’t qualify for SNAP, so many of them lean heavily on campus pantries. Dos Santos, 28, of Brazil, said he is first in line every Monday at the University of Florida’s Hitchcock Field & Fork Food Pantry, arriving 45 minutes before doors open.
His design and visual communications graduate stipend is a nine-month contract, so he saves what he can to pay for the remaining three months during the year, he said.
Dos Santos said he had to skip meals before the semester’s first paycheck arrived, but now he budgets $20 to $25 a week for food, buying groceries the pantry doesn’t provide.
“I was very stressed at the time,” he said. “I still am.”
Autumn Haggard, 19, a wildlife ecology freshman from Jacksonville, said she considers the UF pantry the difference between a manageable grocery budget and a stressful one. She earns minimum wage working at Pet Supermarket and said it’s a relief to pick up a few things at the pantry “without having to worry about my bank account.”
The pantry also helps Haggard maintain her vegetarian diet given that cheap protein is especially hard to find, and between classes and her job, meals don’t always fit into her day.
“Without the food pantry and resources like that, I’d probably be stuck losing more weight, skipping more meals,” she said.
Of course, a food pantry can only help students who come by. More would seek help if asking for it carried less shame, said Ferrier, the FAMU senior.
“As college students, we’re not always going to want to tell people when we’re struggling,” she said. “If we worked a little harder around destigmatizing needing help, or taking help when you really need it, it’d be beneficial for all of us.”