Few things bind the nation together like food does: From California’s avocado toast to the South’s biscuits and gravy, there’s no doubt we all need food to sustain ourselves. The South is especially dependent on the SNAP food stamp program with more than 40% of receiving households being located in the region.

However, with recent changes in the eligibility requirements making SNAP harder to qualify for, the amount of people with access to food may be severely impacted — both in the South and here at USC.

During the pandemic, the SNAP eligibility requirements (otherwise known as food stamps or CalFresh in California) were expanded to include folks who were simply eligible for federal or state work study or who had a FAFSA Expected Family Contribution amount of $0. 

Low-income college students fit this expanded eligibility and were entitled to around $281 per month for their groceries. Starting May 2023, however, those eligibility expansions quietly expired with the expiration of the Federal COVID-19 Public Health Emergency declarations. 

A startling 2023 USC study found that food insecurity in Los Angeles County alone increased by 6% from 2022, which means 3 in 10 families now don’t have reliable access to food. One reasoning offered up by the study notes that COVID-19 era allotments that gave SNAP recipients a little bit of extra money to spend ended in March 2023. 

Losing out on that extra support while the price of groceries is on the rise certainly offers an explanation as to why reverting to pre-pandemic funding levels has had negative consequences on the very families these programs are supposed to help.

As for students, they now have to qualify under the permanent eligibility benefits, which include proof of employment of around 20 hours a week. Because the state of California did not track how many students were eligible under the temporary rules in comparison to the permanent rules, it is hard to estimate how many students in the Golden State will be left without another option to access food because of these changes.  I can tell you, however, that I was one such student caught in the fallout. 

Cursed with a recertification date in July, I had to renew my CalFresh benefits under the new rules. Thankfully, I was working a little north of 20 hours a week, so I checked a big permanent eligibility box, but the new questions they asked me during my interview made me doubt if I even qualified anymore. 

While I eventually got my benefits back as I started to find more work, I realized not all of my fellow college students even have the option to work in addition to their rigorous course loads. I mean, there must be a reason USC itself only allows students to work a maximum of 20 hours a week. If students can find the time, securing an on-campus job is the next barrier to cross, since there are more work-study eligible students than there are available work-study jobs on campus. Our individual situations shouldn’t shut us out from resources as basic as food. To argue otherwise wouldn’t just be unnecessarily cruel, it would be immoral. 

Yet, as immoral as it is to put access to food behind a barrier like part-time work, that is a trade off college students will have to confront as they renew their benefits. Whether it is here or at Southern universities, college students are going to have to ask themselves the most stressful question ever: Should I not work so I can focus on my academics and potentially lose out on making grocery money, or should I take on a part-time job and potentially impact my grades for the worse?

Let’s not forget that if a looming government shutdown eventually becomes a reality, access to food stamps may be impacted even beyond these eligibility changes. The last time we had a government shutdown, the SNAP benefits of nearly 40 million people were set to stop as government funds shriveled up.

Public policies concerning safety nets like food stamps have very real consequences on the populations that they impact. In this case, the federal government’s decision to let these life-sustaining eligibility requirements for college students expire rather than make them permanent is a seismic let-down. Our government is sending many of us to work and school, hungry and desperate. 

We say we’re the leaders of the free world, yet we let the next generation go hungry. It’s time for the government to quit playing around with our food, and ensure that draconic work requirements don’t stand in the way between a person and the sustenance that is a human right.

Quynh Anh Nguyen is a senior writing about the implications of current Southern political events. Her column, “I Reckon,” runs every other Wednesday.