Despite a wet cold front that blew in overnight, the crowd of college students began forming outside an hour before sunrise Friday morning.
At Austin Community College’s Riverside campus, the students lined up with bags or wagons, hoping for a chance to fill them with cans of beans, rice, pasta, fresh meat, vegetables and fruit offered by the Central Texas Food Bank.
For many of them, this is their only chance to get groceries for the month.
“I pretty much only eat the food they give me here,” said Gabriel Parker, a 20-year-old welding student. “In Austin, rent’s a lot. We’re in one of the cheapest places, and I still need some more help.”
Parker, like hundreds of other college students in Austin, struggles to maintain regular access to food. Food insecurity at universities is a growing problem across the nation, but especially in this city, where rent and cost of living have skyrocketed in recent years. As the problem becomes more apparent, many universities are working to fill in the gaps for their students, who sometimes go days without a meal.
“It’s honestly our responsibility,” said Kelly Brown, an ACC student life supervisor. “Because you can’t just look at the student and only think about the academics.”