collects<\/a> unused meal swipes from students with more than 900 partner organizations across the country.<\/p>\nCollege senior Janine Haros, one of the student organizers for the drive, told the DP that seeing food access and food insecurity problems on campus inspired her involvement with the initiative.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s more prevalent than some people realize, and it\u2019s something that a lot of people can help with,\u201d Haros said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Many of the students who donated their meal swipes at the event shared similar sentiments with the DP.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI donated swipes because I think it\u2019s important to give back to our community, and I have extra swipes that I\u2019m not going to use,\u201d Nursing first-year Alex Blank said. \u201cI think it\u2019s a great cause and a good way to use the swipes that I do have.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
College first-year Brady Woodhouse added that the drive is especially important \u201cat a time when a lot of people are about to lose or have already lost their SNAP benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n
Haros mentioned that while many students \u201creally resonated\u201d with the event, some were hesitant to donate because they were unsure that they would have enough meal swipes to sustain themselves for the rest of the semester. To solve this problem, organizers implemented a \u201ccredit debit system\u201d so that meal swipes would not be taken out of the system until the end of the semester, according to Haros.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf a student, for instance, donated five, but at the end of the semester needed those five, they would be able to get those back,\u201d Haros explained.<\/p>\n
College sophomore Maggie Zheng expressed that while she felt the drive was a better alternative to the University \u201cswallowing the money\u201d from students\u2019 unused swipes, she also believes Penn\u2019s dining plan system is \u201cunfair.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis institution has so much money, and if they really wanted to donate, they could donate themselves,\u201d Zheng told the DP. \u201cI don\u2019t really feel like it\u2019s fair to take money away from people that need it to help people that really need it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zheng added that implementing a refund system \u2014 where unused swipes could be carried over to the next semester or converted into dining dollars \u2014 would be a better solution.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs [donating] really voluntary if the money is just going to be gone either way?\u201d Zheng said. \u201cIf the money\u2019s just going to be gone either way, you might as well just donate it, but if there was a case in which it could go back to the student, I feel like that would be better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Penn Dining partnered with Swipe Out Hunger to host a meal-swipe donation drive on Nov. 17, allowing students…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":416492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-416491","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-pa","10":"tag-pennsylvania","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115642466774198369","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}