Since it opened in February 2023, thousands of Western Colorado University students and staff have visited the college’s on-campus food hub, Mountaineer Marketplace. Upon entering the bright and welcoming Pinnacles conference room on the west side of campus, visitors are met with a large mural and a sign-in desk that is full of resources. The rest of the room, set up to resemble a grocery store, is lined with shelves and refrigerators.
Anonymous quotes from students adorn the walls. “The marketplace makes me proud to be a part of a community that values its students’ health and well-being,” reads one.
Mountaineer Marketplace’s leader, McKenzie Mathewson, recently came into the role of Associate Director of Community Wellness at Western after several years working for Resident Life. She said that a recent increase in patrons has been matched by a variety of new foods.
Despite this, Mountaineer Marketplace has met its fair share of challenges over the course of its inaugural year, including an abrupt location change.
“Our fridges and freezers were overloading the electrical in the library,” Mathewson said. “After considering rewiring the library and finding out that that was way out of the budget, we found a new home.”
Mountaineer Marketplace’s success can be attributed in large part to the holistic approach of Western’s Wellness Team and the community support that surrounds this initiative, which has been supported by President Brad Baca and Dean Gary Pierson. Still, the team at Western’s food hub knows that misunderstandings about who should access its services exist because of preconceived notions surrounding food insecurity.
“There is this kind of socially accepted narrative that a college student is supposed to struggle, and I don’t believe that,” she said. “Initially, I think people were like, well, college students have meal plans, do they really need more food? And the answer is yes.”
This sentiment was echoed by Jodi Payne, who directs the Gunnison Food Pantry and expressed her own struggle with food insecurity as a college student. “My college didn’t have a food pantry at the time and I think a lot about students that I knew, the student that I was, and just how useful that would’ve been for me,” she said.
Both Mathewson and Payne repeatedly stressed that there is no specific “image” of someone who uses a food pantry. People of all walks of life find themselves struggling to meet the demands of inflation in an already expensive area. While individuals cannot be held at fault for undernourishment, failures in infrastructure can be.
Gunnison County’s notoriously high cost of living has caused food insecurity to skyrocket with most estimates citing nearly one in three Coloradans as food insecure, a figure that is rising in rural areas. During 2023, Mountaineer Marketplace served 1,261 people. In just the first two months of 2024, the hub has seen over 300 visitors.
One student, who preferred to remain anonymous, has been visiting the hub near-weekly since its opening and said that Mountaineer Marketplace made a major difference in their life. “It’s comforting to just know that you have a place to get food all the time,” they said. “It’s really nice living on campus to have something that close.”
They also said they appreciate the effort to introduce more fresh produce.
The urgency for an on-campus food pantry became more apparent after a 2021 survey of Western students revealed that food insecurity was a rising concern. A council — comprised of Dean Gary Pierson, Payne, a representative from SODEXO, and several community leaders — began the initiative to make Western a hunger-free campus.
“Hunger-free campus” is a designation which comes from the state of Colorado and indicates that a university has earnestly strived to mitigate food insecurity. One requirement is that the campus hosts its food pantry. Gunnison Food Pantry was especially qualified to assist in this effort due to its existing relationship with Care and Share, a Colorado-based food bank program.
Care and Share provides food to both organizations while pop-up pantries, data software, funding, and vendor relationships are provided via Gunnison Food Pantry.
In addition to the on-campus service, Western’s wellness team has expanded to offering SNAP benefits and the Swipe Out Hunger initiative in which students may donate unused SODEXO meals. Both programs are fully accessible to students online and involve a very quick process.
Izzy Stollsteimer, a peer health educator who helps staff the program, explained that her job is to promote student resources both on and off campus. She said that the Marketplace is important, not only for food security but also for cognitive function.As Mountaineer Marketplace finishes out its first full school year, new options are being looked into, including grab-and-go recipes and microwave-safe cooking utensils. Ultimately, the program aims for students to never think twice about what they will eat next. “In making the decision to pay for classes or pay for food, if we can make that decision easier so [students] don’t have to think about their food, then we are doing our job.”