Let’s stop food insecurity together.

This week’s SGA meeting focused on food insecurity and plans to make Barnard students healthier. Changes to Barnard’s rule on “double-swiping” and the introduction of the Share Meals app have been proposed. 

This week, SGA finally took a break from it’s endless line of administrative guests and strike frenzy to focus on….nothing much. Barnard’s Rep Council had one thing on their agenda tonight, which was hearing a proposal about approval of implementing and supporting the Share Meals app at Columbia. The app, which was first created at NYU by Jon Chin, provides students who are experiencing food insecurity and students with extra meal swipes a way to connect.

After close to twenty minutes of waiting for the presenters, who included Chin as well as leaders of Columbia FLiP to show up (when asked why the Council doesn’t do something while they wait, SGA President Sarah Heiny answered “that’s literally the only thing today”), SGA members were ready with questions. Chin detailed the success of his app in it’s previous iterations as a website at NYU. Junior Rep to the Board of Trustees Jessica Reich asked how the app would work with Barnard’s restrictive dining policies. Despite requests from from students. Barnard does not allow “double-swiping,” using more than one swipe at a time to bring others into the dining halls. Vicente Martinez, one of the presenters, said that FLiP had spoken with Aramark, Barnard’s food provider, about changing that system. “We should fix that,” he said. SGA collectively agreed, but no plan was proposed as to how to accomplish that goal. Chin added that Aramark also services NYU dining, but the restrictions on swiping there are negligible. What gives, Aramark? SGA members also questioned the presenters about the role of the undergraduate councils in implementing the app. Their main role would be paying for and executing surveys using the app, to collect data on the food insecurity at Columbia.

Next, SGA transitioned into watching silently as Chin checked if Barnard’s server would allow him to demonstrate the app. Apparently the answer was yes, as SGA members were soon invited to create fake nyu.edu email accounts (in the developer version, that’s all the site can handle) and sign on to Share Meals. SGA members reveled in the app’s ease of use and professional-looking layout. “This is dope,” said Rep for Seven SIsters Relations Aashna Singh. “So cool. So awesome. Snaps.” Snaps indeed.

Image via Pixabay