After experiencing increased demand in recent years, organizers of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s student food pantry are asking campus leaders for help.
The Open Seat Food Pantry is run by eight part-time student employees who distribute over 32,000 pounds of food to hundreds of students each month.
“We are proud of what we have built. But we are also overworked, overwhelmed and stretched beyond what students alone can reasonably sustain,” the student organizers said in a petition launched this week. “We routinely miss classes to keep the pantry open and are constantly on-call, ready to manage the next crisis. … We do this work because we care, but we cannot continue to shoulder this responsibility alone.”…