Almost 1,900 miles away from Keene State College is Colorado State University (CSU), a DI institution with 21,237 more undergraduate students than KSC. In many ways, the two institutions share little in common, but in some respects, there are similarities.
For example, CSU is located in a state that ranks toward the bottom of the pack on the issue of higher education funding, similar to New Hampshire’s low ranking.
In Colorado, the state allocated approximately $6,711 per full-time equivalent (FTE) student in fiscal year 2021-22, according to the state’s Joint Budget Committee 2024 report. The report states the number is a far cry from the United States’ median allocation of $10,237 per FTE student.
New Hampshire allocates $4,629 per FTE student, according to a 2025 study conducted by the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute, leading to the state ranking last in the country for higher education funding.
Funding, or lack thereof, can often crop up as a key roadblock or contributor to the success of not just a higher education institution, but also its various initiatives and programs, such as those that address food insecurity on campus.
So, what has CSU been able to do that KSC hasn’t?
Keene State does have its own on-campus food pantry, The Hungry Owl, which has a main location as well as eight satellite locations. The college also has a recently created chapter of the Food Recovery Network, a national nonprofit that seeks to recover food that would otherwise be thrown out, such as that leftover from catered events. The college chapter repackages recovered food using ServSafe-certified methods and distributes it through The Hungry Owl, using a notification system for those who sign up to hear about recovered food arrivals.
While the two resources play a sizable role in addressing food insecurity at KSC, there is not a fully built-out network or one-stop shop where students in various levels of need can go. For instance, having a program that hosts both a food pantry and a meal swipe program for those in need — at CSU, there is one through the university’s Basic Needs Collective, housed under the Student Affairs Office.
The Basic Needs Collective comprises several initiatives in one, and looks to address not only food insecurity but also point students to clothing and hygiene resources, housing assistance, transportation needs and more, according to the collective’s website.
However, 10 years ago, two university employees started the program as a standalone project to combat food insecurity: Rams Against Hunger (RAH), a free meal swipes and mobile food pantry initiative, according to Basic Needs Program Manager Michael Buttram.
Buttram said he began the program with Jen Johnson, who now serves as co-chair of the Student Affairs in Higher Education program at CSU.
“We had done it as a labor of love,” Buttram said. “We both had other jobs, student-facing jobs, and we were doing this on the side with the help of funding from various partners across campus: the food bank, but mostly the student government.”
Buttram said CSU’s student government, the Associated Students of CSU (ASCSU), is a crucial and powerful body on campus charged with distributing student fee dollars to student organizations, as well as several on-campus resources like the university’s Career Center, Campus Recreation and Student Legal Services, according to ASCSU’s website.
With an empowered student governing body, students are the ones with the authority to spend where they see fit, and in recent years, part of that has meant ensuring RAH has been given a baseline level of funding to partially rely on.
“It’s [funding from ASCSU] happened year over year,” Buttram said. “I was always worried that this would be the flavor of the month and we would fall out of favor and have to seek funding elsewhere, but ASCSU has been the instigator of programs; they’ve been the voice.”
Buttram added ASCSU has the “ear of all the upper administration,” and has spearheaded the funding and focus on student support programs in particular in the past decade.
While KSC’s Student Assembly, which is an organization under the college’s broader Student Government Association, has the power and responsibility to allocate student organization funds from student activity fee dollars, the assembly does not have the power to allocate for campus offices or other services, except for KSC’s Office of Student Involvement.
In the most recent budgeting process in the spring of 2025, student assembly had allocated around $620,000 to student organizations, with only a few thousand left over for contingency funds, paling in comparison to ASCSU’s $57-million pot to pull from. Entrusting students with budgeting the remainder of KSC’s student fee dollars, which they do not currently have access to, could bring about increased on-campus civic engagement and allow students to determine key priorities of KSC to a larger extent.
At CSU, the empowered student government has become a large part of kickstarting crucial student service programs, according to Buttram, and the same could very well happen at KSC if those powers are granted by its administration.
While ASCSU’s funding has been an important piece of the puzzle for Buttram, he noted he still does plenty of work to secure grants and funding boosts from the state.
“I have to look for support and be able to fund our pantries every single year,” Buttram said. “I’m doing that year in, year out and working with a different group of students, so the consistency is not ideal.”
RAH itself, which is now just one of several initiatives under the Basic Needs Office, has a main food pantry location located in CSU’s General Services Building near the heart of campus that is open for 12 hours a week, five “pocket pantries” with grab-and-go food options on campus and a meal swipe program that allows food insecure students to apply for 30-40 free meal swipes if eligibility requirements are met, according to its website.
RAH also hosts a limited food delivery service through a collaboration with RamRide, allowing those with extenuating circumstances on campus to have food from its pantry delivered to them, though the service only operates from 2:30 to 4 p.m. on Fridays.
KSC stacks up similarly when it comes to having a physical pantry, though it is open for four fewer hours weekly, and has satellite locations which are similar to pocket pantries, but the college does not currently host a meal swipe program of any kind.
Unlike KSC, CSU does not have its dining services provided by an external vendor, and instead manages its own dining halls and food options, according to the university’s dining FAQ online, making it easier for RAH to coordinate with the CSU Financial Aid Office and dining services to allow the meal swipe program to run smoothly, according to Buttram.
Students also have the ability to donate up to two guest/bonus meal swipes weekly to students in need through the program.
Regional Director of Operations at Chartwells, KSC’s contracted dining service provider, Bobbie Walker, said students, regardless of meal plan, can donate two bonus swipes per semester currently.
Chartwells Marketing Director Kala Clark said KSC Dining hosts special events where students can donate swipes, such as the Thanksgiving-themed “Thankful,” which saw 503 swipes donated this year.
Clark said the swipes are “put into the pool that can be used by the students that need them,” though it is unclear how or where food-insecure students can access the donated swipes.
At the University of New Hampshire, there is a “Swipe It Forward” program, which allows 15 swipe donations per year, according to UNH’s website. UNH also utilizes its own in-house dining service, rather than a contracted one.
RAH also hosts Ram Food Recovery, which partners with CSU Housing & Dining Services to recover leftover food from catered events, similar to KSC’s Food Recovery Network chapter.
Buttram described his day as “all over the place,” adding that he spends a couple of hours each day in a visioning strategy meeting, around an hour on donor cultivation, with additional time spent on grant writing, tours, filming gratitude videos for donors and on-the-ground, hands-on work with food delivery.
Buttram initially delayed his phone interview with The Equinox, as he was unloading around 800 pounds of potatoes. He later took the call while taking a ride down to Denver, about an hour from CSU, to buy $2,000 worth of halal chicken for the university’s Muslim students, which came as a result of money secured in a donor drive.
“Half my day is going to be driving and loading and unloading a whole bunch of heavy stuff,” Buttram said.
CSU, by nature of having a College of Agricultural Sciences, means it has a farm plot, which Buttram partially utilizes to stock the pantry, adding that 23,000 pounds of produce were harvested in 2024.
“Because it’s a small and growing area, it’s very much akin to being a director of a nonprofit, where you’re called upon to do just a little bit of everything,” Buttram said.
But the work of addressing food insecurity on campus is never without its roadblocks. Buttram said a major challenge that he, as well as his colleagues, has worked to avoid is overpromising and underdelivering to students.
“When somebody comes in, and there is no milk, and there are no eggs and because you’ve run out of the funding … that definitely lets you know that you’re not keeping up with your promises,” Buttram said.
Buttram said he works to prevent shortages by tracking stock and pantry usage closely to understand levels of expected traffic and ensuring funding will remain by constantly working with donors and ASCSU so that students don’t go hungry or get turned away due to a lack of resources.
As for other challenges, Buttram mentioned the dangers of people in his line of work sometimes falling into a “white savior” mindset, where they think of themselves as having all the answers without first understanding the community’s needs. Buttram said he combats this by hiring staff with lived experience when it comes to food insecurity and putting students at the forefront of decision-making.
“We’ve created a lot of little subgroups and committees of students who are direct users of the pantry, a lot of feedback surveys and some focus groups, to try to make sure we’re doing it right in a way that affirms dignity [and] strengthens community,” Buttram said.
Recent data is limited as to RAH’s efficacy, though CSU published an Institutional Research, Planning and Effectiveness report in 2020 analyzing student body use of three RAH programs at the time: The Ram Food Recovery Program, the Meal Swipe Program and its Mobile Food Pantry.
In the 2019-2020 academic year, about three out of four students at CSU participated in at least one of the three programs, with the majority having utilized the Mobile Food Pantry and 3% of students having participated in all three programs.
In the 2023-2024 academic year, RAH pantry use saw a “significant” jump in visits, going from 11,429 to 17,712 from the 2022-2023 academic year, according to the CSU Division of Student Affairs’ 2023-2024 Annual Report, demonstrating a level of need that is only increasing at the university.
A message that appeared in CSU Chancellor Tony Frank’s November 2025 newsletter did note that RAH’s pantry saw 6,700 visits between July and November of this year alone, adding that a mobile pantry hosted in the university’s student center provided groceries to 842 people.
CSU Junior Aubree Miller, a SNAP recipient, said that while she does not personally utilize the pantry, it has been and continues to be a vital resource to the campus.
“Not having the food pantry would be a huge disservice to students who need extra support in terms of both food and financial security,” Miller said. “More people rely on things like SNAP and food pantries than you would expect and they’re vital resources for so many people and so many people wouldn’t be able to survive or go to school or work or things like that without it.”
As part of Collective Colorado’s reporting, then-CSU senior Lauren Hallmark, a food insecure student who worked at the pantry in a paid position at the time, spoke with the outlet about her experience with finding the resources on campus.
“I haven’t thought about how I’m going to get food in the past two years and it’s been great,” Hallmark was quoted as saying in Collective Colorado’s reporting.
According to the article, Hallmark supplemented her diet with the pantry’s offerings and food she was able to get through receiving SNAP benefits.
While the work of addressing food insecurity will never be perfect, and often is not easy, Buttram said it will never stop being rewarding for him.
“It’s never going to make me rich but I love the work,” Buttram said. “I truly feel strongly about what I do and I think it’s the kind of thing, as a father, that I hope my boys will see value in and learn something from my example.”
Nathan Hope can be contacted at
