Dear Colgate Community,

Food is expensive. As of Feb. 23, the average price for a dozen eggs is approximately $8.03, a 38.21% increase since President Donald Trump took office earlier this year. With recent tariffs on goods arriving in the United States from Mexico, China and Canada, the Consumer Brands Association reported that we should expect higher consumer prices from foods grown in warm tropical and subtropical regions, including mangoes, berries, pineapples and avocados. Initiated earlier this month, Trump’s 25% additional tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico and a 10% additional tariff on imports from China results in an estimated $45 billion loss of U.S. economic output, followed by national price increases of consumer goods, job losses and wage cuts.

The agricultural industry is on the frontlines of the many compounding effects the Trump administration will have on structurally vulnerable populations nationwide, especially regarding the recent layoffs of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) officials amid bird flu outbreaks. There is a possible $116 billion loss by 2030 from meat, dairy and animal producers due to shrinking harvests and soil degradation, plus mass deportation raids preventing farmers from tending to their jobs, of which 61% of farm workers are immigrants. Border Patrol agents appearing in unmarked Suburbans all over Bakersfield, Calif., detained immigrants working in acres of orange fields, sending shockwaves to undocumented families fearful of future raids, now faced with the challenge of staying home to avoid deportation or returning to work to provide for their families and face the risk of being deported. 

“This is not just a farm issue — it’s a food security issue, an economic issue, and a community issue,” said Bryan Little, the senior director of policy advocacy at the California Farm Bureau. It is time for institutions to redefine what their relationship to food looks like. What does it mean to have healthy food options for all students, regardless of their meal plan? How can we redefine food as not a luxury but a web of care?

As a low-income and prediabetic student living with hypoglycemia, a condition where my blood sugar level is lower than the standard range, my entire day revolves around food. Hypoglycemia, without proper care, causes task-specific localized reductions in brain function and, if unchecked for an extended period, may lead to brain damage and long-term cognitive dysfunction. Right after eating a meal, I often find myself thinking about what I plan on eating next because my condition requires me to eat once every two to three hours. On my busiest days, after eating all the snack bars I could find in my book bag, I would prowl through different academic buildings to eat any and all of the snacks available in front of waiting rooms or student lounges. 

Students at Colgate University whose physical conditions impair their daily functions face an increased disadvantage when navigating our campus’s hilly landscapes: trips to the local grocery store may take up to at least two hours, and it is inconvenient for students to travel for 30 minutes to their residential housing in between classes, work-study obligations, job meetings, and more. In my experience as a student leader for multicultural organizations on campus, the Office of Student Involvement (OSI) has discouraged campus student organizations from requesting food at their events for monetary reasons, despite food being one of the most effective displays of care, embodiment, and community building. 

With rising tuition costs, amid financial preparations for living under Trump’s anti-working class regime, first-generation students must resort to alternate means of finding meals as upperclassmen, including being the recipient of donations from meal swipe programs. When I first applied for meal swipes under the donation program, my application was denied before sending an exchange of emails to my dean detailing the severity of hypoglycemia on my physical and cognitive abilities. I received five meal swipes used over ten weeks, but a student at any institution should not have to raise concerns over a fundamental human right, especially when dealing with physical conditions.

For many Colgate students like myself, being in the middle of upstate New York provides a temporary barrier between my academic pursuits and the looming terror happening in the real world. Dining Services workers behave like a panopticon by surveilling students at dining halls for their every move, with their actions being a constant reminder that Colgate as an academic institution will never feel completely safe, favoring allegiance to capital over basic human needs. Earlier this semester, I went to the O’Connor Campus Center (Coop) to grab something to eat between class and a job interview. Based on the impression that I did not swipe for my meal, a dining service worker followed me across the dining hall, called Campus Safety and issued a series of threats to put me in handcuffs, arrest me and take me to court over a $10.99 box of sushi. 

This embarrassing interaction is one of many instances of punitive measures that disproportionately impact our poorest and, very frequently, students of color. Trump announced an executive order Feb. 19 to end “all taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal aliens,” which could include Medicaid and SNAP benefits. Food insecurity on American college campuses is an invisible epidemic that is improperly addressed by Colgate, an epidemic that pushes students to become unwilling participants in larger systems of harm.

In the book “Braiding Sweetgrass,” Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about how we must foster a reciprocal relationship with plants instead of it being an item for sale as a market commodity: “If all the world is a commodity, how poor we grow. When all the world is a gift in motion, how wealthy we become.” Her words have become deeply embedded in my consciousness since reading her book during my freshman year, and this statement still resonates amid a college campus environment that needs to reimagine ways of being. Finding food for survival wherever possible should not be punished, let alone criminalized, nor should Colgate monitor and police how students decide to nurture their bodies.

Food is an act of love — a gift, an opportunity to celebrate our kinship. With its many resources at its disposal, Colgate needs to protect its students by ensuring that nutritious food is accessible to all, especially now that food prices and accessibility are making basic produce a luxury under the Trump administration.

Colgate became tuition-free in 2021 for students from families with an annual income of $80,000 or less, but the truth is that we still need to do a better job of providing community support for students who are actively preparing to live under intense cruelty from mass deportations, loss of essential government services and autonomy over their human bodies. You may not know them or their stories, but the existence of a student at a prestigious institution using their work-study paychecks to assist their unemployed immigrant mother of three on rent is more common than you think.

Sincerely,

Jose Arriaza ’25

EDITORIAL NOTE: Information in this article has been updated since its publication in print.