Food Swipes available to Cal Poly Humboldt students

The Meal Swipe Assistance program is available to help students on and off campus dealing with food insecurity by offering free meal swipes through the Basic Needs program at Cal Poly Humboldt.

Charles Moore, Campus Assistance, Response, and Engagement Basic Needs Coordinator, ensures that students are aware of the resources available to them surrounding basic food necessity.

“This program is made for students with food insecurity, or if they don’t get enough to eat, Moore said. “This program is intended to give them swipes for free so they can come to campus and get some meals for free.”

Students who are interested in requesting food swipes can email basicneeds@humboldt.edu. The requests will be forwarded to Moore and given a set of questions that help identify who they are and what their needs are. There’s a form which will ask the same questions to identify student’s needs if you wish to go in that route.

Currently, students are eligible to get six swipes which are supposed to last for a four-week period. Students are encouraged to reapply after four weeks, if they still need food swipe assistance.

The meal swipes will then be added to the student’s ID card. Students can anticipate their meal swipes to be processed in two-three business days. The food swipes are only available for use at the J, each swipe is equal to one free ‘all you can eat’ meal at the J.

The cost to eat at the J varies on dinner service: breakfast is $8.75, lunch is $9.75 and dinner is $10.75.

“There isn’t a limit to how many times students can apply for food swipe assistance, as long as they need the assistance, then they are more than welcome to continue to use the assistance,” Moore said.

If there continues to be a need for food assistance in the future, the Meal Swipe Assistance program plans to continue through the next academic school year. The program is currently funded through the CSU Basic Needs Initiative, which has ongoing funding that the university receives.

“I am anticipating that there will be a need in the fall, so we will continue to put funds in this program,” Moore said.

Update Feb. 15