The Expensive Part of “College Life”

You ever notice how we treat hunger in college as if it’s a rite of passage—like bad mac & cheese and group projects? People joke about living on ramen, but the joke stops being funny when the ramen becomes the plan. Campus food insecurity is rising for the same dull reason most things go wrong: the numbers don’t add up. Rent goes up, groceries go up, tuition and fees go up, and the hours in a day stay exactly the same. Students work more, study more, and still come up short. And when you’re short, you don’t cancel your exam. You cancel dinner. What makes it tricky is that hunger doesn’t look like hunger anymore. It looks like a student who “already ate,” or someone who skips a social night because they’re “busy,” or a kid with a full course load who can’t concentrate because their stomach is doing the talking. There are food pantries, and I’m grateful they exist, but they’re often limited by supply, timing, and the simple fact that some people would rather go without than feel like they’re taking. That’s why I find the ShareBucks idea interesting. It treats food insecurity less like a moral failure and more like a coordination problem. People can post specific needs—meal kits, groceries, essentials—and someone else can claim the request and follow through. It’s practical, and it’s quiet. The app even acknowledges the person who helps with “Sharebucks,” which sounds a little like a scoreboard for decency, but maybe that’s what we need. If social media can reward strangers for dancing, it can reward people for helping. The thing is, you don’t fix a community with speeches. You fix it with small, repeatable actions. The movie The Greatest Showman says, “The noblest art is that of making others happy.” That’s probably true, but I’d add this: it’s also the noblest way to make a campus function. If you want to see what needs exist near you—or what you could do about them—ShareBucks is sitting there in the App Store, waiting for someone to tap it.