Demographics: Black Female, Masters in Writing Arts

Tags: Writing Arts, Masters, Food Insecurity, Transportation, Working Student

My name is Brittany. I'm 26, and I'm a graduate student in the Writing Arts Program. I'm a state student and I live here. Technically I'm from further south. So I go back and forth between this state and my home state a lot, which kind of gets expensive, not gonna lie. I am doing writing arts, but I really wanted to do resource equity when I was an undergraduate. My Scholars Project was really focused on resource equity and research and things like that. So I switched to my second love, which is writing arts. I pretty much am like a huge gamer. I like DnD. I like Final Fantasy 14. I love anime. When I have the time, I like to read for fun. And just kind of explore different places. I kind of wish I knew what natural science museums were around here 'cause I used to do those a lot at home. Especially the ones that let you get the crystals, that search for crystals, all those are so much fun. I am also on Discord a lot.

I remember I would order through… I think it was DoorDash. Yeah. So, I would order through DoorDash, from a different restaurant in the area but then we have a place called H-E-B, and it's a big grocery store down south. So I will order through H-E-B for my groceries and compared to what I pay up here sometimes where I deliver my groceries 'cause I, I don't drive, that's what I'm trying to get over now, and compared to what I used to pay with the delivery fees for H-E-B compared to this state I feel like I got more bang for my buck back home, because I don't know if it's just this state or what. But every time I order groceries, it's almost $200. I'm just like, "That's ridiculous. That's a huge portion of my paycheck!" I'm a student working here. I only make about $680 every two weeks." I don't get my housing paid for either. I don't get my tuition paid for. So I'm also paying out of pocket, I think $400 a month for my tuition. I used to get my tuition and housing paid for, but I had to change jobs because it wasn't a good place to work on campus at all. And even when I worked there, I was still going to the food pantry. I was still getting the food pantry 'cause back then I was making $413. I know one time they paid us $387 for two weeks without any explanation even though we were on the stipend. Yeah, and I remember there was another point where they goofed up the payroll and we weren't getting paid for a month. They told us, "Go to the food pantry or pay... or apply for emergency services on campus." I think it was through the dean's office and nobody got back to us. Then they were like, "Oh, would you like some Opportunity University Balsam?" I was like, "No, I can't freaking go anywhere with that."

So I didn't know about the university pantry until my third week of being here. So the third week of January. I went with my roommates who went here before me. I thought we were all gonna go together because I was just like, "Yay, broke besties ." It was just, after that, they stopped going. It was, "Ew, this place sucks." I was just like, "Okay, I still..." I was like, "I still need the food. So I'm gonna keep going." But, yeah I went the third week, I was like, "Oh, wow, I was able to get a breakfast sandwich. I was able to get some noodles. I was able to get some sausage.  I was able to get some rice and beans." So I was just like, "Oh my gosh, I can have full-blown meals now."

 I felt like my mood got boosted by going to the university pantry 'cause I was just like, "Okay, I don't have to worry about this." I feel better. I feel like I can focus more and even though it was weird, I feel like I could focus more, I could eat more. I was still gonna have class two to three hours earlier. I'm just like, "I'm going there now, but now I'm just happy and motivated. I wanna study. I wanna stay here." It felt more positive, even though my roommates were coming out mad because now that I had groceries. They had all this space 'cause, you know, I didn't have shit. I didn't have anything in the fridge and now my roommate turns up, and she's like, "Oh, we don't have any space." I'm just like “yeah, yeah, maybe it's because, your fourth roommate, do they have anything to eat?" I'm just like "I should get angry about the privilege crap, right?" 'cause I remember one time it made me feel so awkward 'cause one of them I think she was just talking and she's like, "Oh my gosh, I used to work at this restaurant and all these homeless people used to stop by and they come at the end of the day and ask for food and I was just like, 'Oh my gosh, so gross. I wish they would do something about them or put them in another town.'" I'm just like, "Holy shit, you are an awful person."

It made me feel alienated, because, in my undergraduate, people didn't talk about that.  Even though the pantry kind of sucked, at the end of the day, you have professors and events constantly sending out emails saying, "Hey, we just had this event, or hey, we just had this meeting, if students wanna eat the food from the meetings and stuff you're free to come." I really liked that about my old school 'cause I felt like it was more of a community there compared to here. There was this one thing that I used to like that they did was something called Loaves and Fishes. So during midterms and the end of the semester, we had a little house on campus because I went to a Catholic school, even though I'm not Catholic. But they had a house where the ministers worked and they would order a bunch of food and during midterms and finals, they’d have a taco bar, a pasta bar, and just feed students as they do midterms and finals. So I thought that was really cool and you can even sit there and eat and talk. If you need to talk to someone they would be there 'cause they also had student ministers in training as well. And I, I just really loved the house 'cause it felt like an actual house. You had the kitchen, like if you had your own food and you lived in the dorms that didn't have a kitchen, they let you cook in there.

I used to work in a different office and I felt like I had to keep my head down all the time. Me and other new graduate coordinators, we got yelled at all the time and they say, "Oh, you're working 20..." We work 20 to 25 hours a week, that's bullshit. We worked close to 40 hours a week and then when something like a hiccup happened, we got reamed at really hard. We weren't properly trained. And then even though we weren't properly trained and the person that was supposed to retrain us... was supposed to train us, never did, but yet every time something went wrong, it was our fault. There were side comments. We'd be working big events and you just see one of the head bosses just over on the other side of the field during Saturday Night Live just whispering and talking crap the whole day, and you have the students that we supervise come over and go, "Hey, did you know that so-and-so was saying this and that about you and the rest of the students?" It was really just awful. I know I passed out in October before I quit that office towards the Halloween event because I was so overworked. I told them that I literally had to retake the depression medicine that was hurting me to be there because I was so unhappy there. There was a lot of backstabbing. There was special treatment. The second years we're doing some of the pot-stirring in the office and we talked to the proposed staff about it. The proposed staff was like, "Oh, it's okay." But yet when something went wrong with us, we got whole meetings and dirty looks from the professional staff. I'm just like “ew” there. There was no sense of community. It felt like they were just pitting us against each other and I did not like that. There was also a lot of gaslighting. When I talked about how we were working over the hours, I basically had a conversation with HR about it. The next day, my former boss makes a false report of me being suicidal after me telling her, "Hey, I'm going to HR because I don't think this is right." I'm in my room relaxing, you just hear housing banging on my fucking door, and I didn't think it was my door because why the fuck would housing be banging on my door which I haven't done anything against the violations. I didn't answer the door, and they came into my room and it was like, "Are you safe?" I'm just like, "What?" They told me my boss told them that I was gonna kill myself, and I'm just like, "Why would you do that because I went to HR about you, about you... this office doing constantly wrong shit." So I didn't appreciate that, and that was the beginning of the end for me at that graduate assistantship.

That’s one of the better options to eat or freaking ordering out. I kind of hate ordering, and getting my groceries delivered. I really hate it with a passion because for some reason the address for the townhouses is weird.  It's a really 50/50 chance if it shows up on the app for the drivers, and then you have drivers calling me, getting annoyed, saying, "I don't know where I am," 'cause they're on the street, or because they left them there, or, "I don't..." It's like, "Yo it's not my fault that the app is leading you that way. I put the address down." And they’ll ask , "Can you direct me from here?" I'm just like, "I- I'm not from here. I don't know where that is." It's a pain, and it just builds my anxiety because I'm already anxious and here you are screaming at me. So half the time it makes you not wanna order damn groceries. Since we moved downstairs, we're closer, 'cause accessibility services moved, we were on the third floor and then we moved to the first floor, last month. We actually found out that somebody in our building in financial aid created a little mini food pantry and he was trying to donate his food to the university pantry, but the university pantry wouldn't take it. So he gave it to Laura and now that's why we got all the pasta and the marinara sauce now because of that one guy in financial aid. I was just like, "Man, I wish we would have known about this sooner."

As for any changes I’d like made here I actually want different departments to connect with each other. Maybe, have a list of all the departments that have food pantries on campus and more collaboration, because I noticed even here, there are a lot of departments that should be working together on certain issues that never had communication with each other. Yeah, I feel like there should be more collaboration to get that information out of there because Laura's told me a couple of times that some of the businesses in the area tried to donate to the university pantry like Tuba Farms. 'Cause Tuba Farms does the Fresh Egg Friday and she does the farming and she gives free fruits and vegetables to the community, and she tried to donate to the university pantry, but the university pantry wouldn't accept it. We still don't know why to this day. I feel like there should be more collaboration. I feel like more of these conversations should be had with the students, 'cause the students have a lot to say. Sometimes it's nerve-wracking to talk about this, not gonna lie, but at the same time, I feel like these conversations need to be had. I've been able to have these conversations more and more recently because I started working at that office with Laura. And she started the conversation with me and nobody's really asked me about food insecurity and my thoughts on it. That kind of made me want to talk more about it. I'm, you know, trying to expand my knowledge of the different food spots in the area for students. I'm glad the conversation is getting started. A lot of things that came to light, it kind of makes me realize that I kind of wanna start something that protects the rights of students. I don't know if that’s something that exists on campus already.