This week, LSU Dining unveiled a new collaboration with the non-profit organization Swipe Out Hunger to combat food insecurity on campus. The premise is simple: students are asked to donate meal swipes when walking into the 5 or the 459, and these swipes are then redistributed to students in need. 
As a student with a meal plan on campus, I was excited to learn about this initiative. I rarely use all 12 of my allotted meal swipes a week and I was more than willing to donate all unused swipes to a good cause.
As I looked more deeply into the Swipe Out Hunger initiative, however, I soon grew disappointed by its limited reach. Currently, the initiative is only active for a week — from Jan. 30 to Feb. 5 — and only allows students to donate one swipe per meal.

I was far from the only student who found the program’s limitations off-putting. Others quickly took to Twitter to ask why the program wasn’t available year-round and why meal plans were so unaffordable in the first place.
If the goal is ultimately to raise as many donated swipes as possible, why not lift these restrictions? Swipe Out Hunger is currently only in its pilot stage at LSU Dining, yet it still feels unnecessarily cruel to institute such narrow limitations on a program when each swipe could be the deciding factor on whether a student goes to bed hungry that night.
Beyond its narrow scope, the Swipe Out Hunger campaign is also unclear on exactly how the swipe donation system works. Donating swipes is easy — all you have to do is talk to the dining hall cashier — but how will at-risk students then access these swipes?
The national Swipe Out Hunger website offers little clarity on this point. It suggests that the swipes may be used to buy food for the on-campus food pantry or go directly to hungry students, but this left me with more questions than before. How are the swipes converted into canned goods and cereal? How do students access the free swipes?
Other partner colleges participating in the Swipe Out Hunger initiative have food-insecure students fill out a form. When I looked for a similar form associated with our University, all I could find was a request form for the LSU Food Pantry.
As the University advertises this campaign to students, it should simultaneously be providing information for how students in need can access the donated swipes. Without these resources, the initiative feels like a hollow attempt at tackling food insecurity that places responsibility squarely on the students’ shoulders instead of the University’s.
In light of the growing economic insecurity caused by the pandemic, I appreciate that LSU Dining chose to implement this impactful program. I only hope those in charge expand this week-long initiative into a permanent and easily-accessible program that ensures all LSU students a more even chance at succeeding in college.

Cécile Girard is a 21-year-old psychology junior from Lake Charles.