Beavers know how to work hard – how to get out there and dig in to accomplish big things.

But a growling stomach is distracting and bound to slow down even the best students.

So many OSU students struggle to pay tuition each term – and sometimes having enough money for groceries is a stretch on a student’s budget and a major stressor.

Food insecurity and struggling to make ends meet while in college – these things aren’t new. Many faculty and staff on campus today relied on food pantries or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) (colloquially known as food stamps) to get through their years spent on campus.

Even though so many people rely on SNAP and similar programs, stigma and shame can really prevent today’s students from seeking help.

Did SNAP help you? Share your SNAP Story.

Learning that the faculty and staff they respect and admire needed SNAP to get through college can really help students see that they’re not alone, that college is hard for many people – and that it’s ok to ask for help.

Sharing your SNAP story is easy – you can email us to get started or, if you’re feeling inspired and want to jump right in, write a few paragraphs sharing your experience, how SNAP (and perhaps other programs) helped you, and related “things I wish I’d known then.” Keep the tone casual and conversational. If you have any photos of yourself from that era, we’d love to include them too. Send us your SNAP story (email HSRC@oregonstate.edu) and we’ll help you share your story both on the HSRC blog, but also help get it out to students who really need to read it. We’ll do some minor edits for clarity and add some text about how students can get support with a SNAP application, but mostly we’ll leave your words as you wrote them. After we post your story, we’d love to work with you to help share your SNAP story with HSRC students – and those you may have worked with too.

SNAP stigma is real and we don’t think it’ll dissolve quickly- so we’ll be looking for SNAP stories for years to come. Graduate students, faculty, staff, alumni – if you’ve got a SNAP story, it can really make a difference to students to read.