DAYTON, Ohio — These days, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t noticed or been frustrated with high costs at the grocery store.

While inflation rates are dropping, that doesn’t mean costs are going down.

One group feeling this financial pull over the past several years are college students, and they continue to feel it with the start of this school year.

Food insecurity on college campuses is nothing new, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution to what a student needs.

That’s why school pantries, like at the University of Dayton, are critical.

“I’d say it gets pretty busy. A lot of students are coming in,” said sophomore Stella Pry-Brown.

Pry-Brown works at the Flyers Food Pantry and was busy prepping ramen packets for an upcoming campus event.

“Just to raise more awareness and make the food pantry more known to all students,” Pry-Brown said.

The pantry first opened in the fall of 2021 during the pandemic.

Over the years it’s grown, and it’s seen as a welcoming and inclusive space.

“It feels very rewarding, especially when I see people coming in and they’re like so excited, especially when people come in for the first time, and I get to show them around,” Pry-Brown said.

Pry-Brown is a sustainability major and likes seeing the university’s sustainability institute working to give back.

“Once a week, they bring in a bunch of catered food, and we are able to package that up into smaller containers and put them into the fridge,” Pry-Brown said.

“If you play your cards right you can probably walk out of here with 25 items on the 10 item limit,” Assistant Dean of Wellbeaing Laura Carper said.

Students can come in almost anytime, no questions asked.

There’s a wide variety of options, from produce to hygiene products.

“I think no matter how long we’ve been talking about food sovereignty and what food justice and equity looks like, students sometimes still feel like there’s a narrative or stigma around it,” Carper said.

“We have some faculty members of campus who have done some research looking at food insecurity across our Marianist institutions and one of the things that they found was a lot of our students were doing things like skipping meals or maybe having a meal that was smaller than they would have liked,” said Assistant Dean of students Kristen Keen said.

Between 2017 and 2022, 36% of University of Dayton students reported being food insecure at some point.

According to the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, released in July of 2023, 23% of undergraduate students experienced food insecurity during the pandemic.

“Just in this past week, we’ve had about 187 students,” Carper said.

As more students learn about the pantry, more are expected to stop by.

For international students and those living far from home, it’s a lifeline, but for Pry-Brown, it’s a way to do good work and embrace sustainability.

“I just love coming here, and I just think it’s like kind of a de-stressor, and it’s just so nice seeing everyone come in and being able to help people,” Pry-Brown said.