UNC Greensboro junior Taniyah McCormick grabbed a couple of plastic bags to fill as she perused the shelves at the Spartan Open Pantry on Thursday.
She used to stop by once a month, but with rising prices — and now a delay in her November federal food benefits — she said she’s coming by more often.
McCormick, 21, of Hillsborough, said she receives $52 a month from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a program that’s been on hold since the beginning of November because of the federal government shutdown.
That monthly amount doesn’t sound like a lot, she said, “but every little bit helps.”
She’s not alone. Nearly 85,000 college students in North Carolina receive SNAP benefits, according to estimates by the Student Basic Needs Coalition, a national organization dedicated to addressing food and financial insecurity on college campuses.
A recent study of food insecurity at five North Carolina college campuses showed nearly 30 percent of students at the four public and one private four-year schools reported low or very low food security status.
McCormick knows other students struggle with accessing food. She sees how many ask about the campus food pantry on the college social media app Yik Yak.
“The Spartan Pantry is here to help us, especially in this time of need,” she tells students who ask about the pantry.
At her Thursday visit, McCormick picked up cereal, cheese, toilet paper, eggs, water, sweet potatoes, green beans, spaghetti sauce, a couple of snacks and the staple of college students everywhere — ramen.
Tens of thousands of North Carolina college students are affected by the food benefits delay. More concerning to researchers like UNC Chapel Hill’s Jessica Soldavini is that tens of thousands more may not know they are eligible to receive that help.
SNAP update
November’s distributions of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program have been delayed amid the government shutdown, leading to lawsuits, with federal judges ordering President Donald Trump’s administration to use an emergency fund to at least partially pay for benefits. One judge ordered the government to fully fund November’s benefits.
On Friday, Nov. 7, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services said in an email that partial payments were loaded onto EBT cards that morning for more than 586,000 N.C. households that rely on SNAP.
Because of how SNAP formulas work, some people could see benefits this month drop to $16 or even nothing, NC DHHS said. A family of four that normally receives the maximum benefit will receive about $646 instead of $994.
Over the weekend of Nov. 8-9, a bipartisan group of Congressional lawmakers reached an agreement to end the shutdown that includes full funding for SNAP through the rest of the fiscal year. On Monday, the Senate passed the funding measure. It also must pass the House, and Trump has to sign the legislation before the shutdown can end.
‘An overlooked issue’
In North Carolina, 33 percent of all college students are eligible for SNAP, according to estimates by the Student Basic Needs Coalition, but more than half of those eligible to receive the food benefits aren’t signed up for them.
That’s 99,572 students at North Carolina colleges who could be getting help but aren’t.
“Food security among college students has been historically … an overlooked issue,” said Soldavini, an assistant professor at UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health.
She said students are either told or think that they can’t get the federal food benefits.
There’s another big barrier for students, said Andrew Mails-Saine, executive director and campus minister of the nonprofit Wesley-Luther, which runs the Spartan Open Pantry.
“It’s not the easiest thing in the world to apply for,” he said.
An initiative launched in the state in January 2025 aims to increase awareness and participation in SNAP among college students.
NC College Food Benefits, a statewide campaign by the Carolina Hunger Initiative, provides information on SNAP, as well as links to North Carolina’s statewide 2-1-1 assistance line and other sources that can connect students to aid. More importantly, it has an eligibility screener that is geared toward answering the questions students might have, said Soldavini, who is also a research specialist with No Kid Hungry NC and Carolina Hunger Initiative.
“A lot of the specific questions and information a college student would have wasn't always addressed in your general SNAP outreach materials or if you were to look it up online,” Soldavini said.
For example, if a student has a meal plan, does that disqualify them? What if they are in work-study? How many credit hours do they need to be taking to meet the student exemption? (Not necessarily, no, and at least six hours for undergraduates and four and a half hours for graduate students.)
Answers to those and more college-oriented questions are in the NC College Food Benefits Q&A and in the SNAP screener.
“It is a really important issue, and unfortunately, this population also tends to have less food assistance resources available to them,” Soldavini said.
She said there are programs to help younger students, from the federal free breakfast and lunch programs to free summer meals.
“Then they get to college, and they lose access to those programs,” Soldavini said.
A ‘challenging’ situation
Research shows that food insecurity has a lot of negative effects on college students, just as it does on younger students, according to Soldavini.
It can affect academic performance, dietary intake and mental health, she said.
“It can be really challenging to be able to focus during classes,” Soldavini said.
She was part of the team that studied food insecurity among North Carolina college students. The researchers surveyed 3,043 students on five campuses in the state during the spring 2023 semester. All were four-year schools, which is one of the limits of the study — it doesn’t calculate food insecurity among community college students, the authors wrote.
The study found that, consistent with earlier research, lower food security was associated with poor sleep quality, poor perceived health and elevated stress.
Food insecurity rates were higher among Hispanic students, LGBTQ students, first-generation college students and undergraduates, the study showed.
The study’s authors suggested that colleges and universities should “develop targeted and tailored interventions” for at-risk students.
Many North Carolina campuses already have.
Meeting basic needs
At UNC Pembroke, 53 percent of students receive a federal Pell Grant, a sign of economic disadvantage. Across the entire 16-campus UNC System, 36.9 percent of students receive the federal tuition aid.
The university offers a suite of resources for students: food and clothing pantries; an interactive online map to help find resources in the area; support for homeless students; help with housing, transportation and child care; and a link to the state’s Food and Nutrition Services site, which administers SNAP.
Student peer leaders are trained to guide students through the SNAP application process, said Christie Poteet, assistant vice chancellor for student affairs. Students can also fill out an online application for aid, which is followed up by a call from a case manager who works with them to find the resources they need, she said.
Poteet said UNCP has worked to create a culture and space on campus where students know they can ask for help.
“All of this is a community of care,” she said.
At UNC Greensboro, 54 percent of students received a Pell Grant in 2024-25, the latest data available. The university has programs to help students struggling with basic needs, such as housing and unexpected or short-term financial emergencies. A list of resources available to students includes the Spartan Open Pantry.
The pantry is run by a combination of paid staff and volunteers, most of them students or former students who have received help from the pantry in the past, Mails-Saine said.
On Thursday, Kris Perdue, a senior classical studies student from Winston-Salem, stocked shelves with food the pantry received from a recent WFMY-Channel 2 and Second Harvest Food Bank food drive.
He said food donations are great, but financial donations go a lot further. Food pantries get discounted prices when they buy in bulk or from organizations like Second Harvest, he said. Plus, they can target what is most needed or requested by students.
The pantry gives out a little over 2,000 pounds of food each week. He expects that will increase to 3,000 to 4,000 with the rise in food prices and more people needing help.
Many of UNCG’s students are the first in their family to attend college, Mails-Saine said. Some students work two jobs. Some send money home to help their families who are struggling financially.
He wonders if the stories of those struggling amid the delay in SNAP benefits will make people realize how many of their neighbors, colleagues and friends are in need.
“I hope this causes some soul-searching,” he said.
This article first appeared on North Carolina Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
North Carolina Health News is an independent, non-partisan, not-for-profit, statewide news organization dedicated to covering all things health care in North Carolina. Visit NCHN at northcarolinahealthnews.org.
