Mission & Mandate
We, the UA Committee on Food Security, aim to tackle one of the most pressing issues on MIT’s campus: students’ ability to access and afford food during the semester. Established in the Fall of 2023, the Food Security committee has done work to quantify food insecurity at MIT and kickstarted new initiatives to lessen the impact that food insecurity has on nearly 10% of undergraduates at MIT.
Key Findings
Contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence to suggest that students on meal plans are any less likely to be food insecure than students who don’t have meal plans.
Students who experience food insecurity are more likely to need additional financial resources compared to their counterparts. However, when asked whether a lack of time or lack of money was the leading cause of food problems, the population was split (forty-one versus fifty-one percent, respectively). Furthermore, there’s no evidence to suggest that students that experience food insecurity spend more money on food or buy more expensive meals compared to their peers.
From the perspective of students, the effective TechCASH to USD exchange rate is roughly two dollars in TechCASH to three dollars in USD. That is, for every dollar that MIT gives students in TechCASH, the perceived value to the average student is roughly about sixty-six to seventy-five cents