CSUB celebrates groundbreaking for basic needs hub

New facility near Student Union will house Basic Needs Department, larger Food Pantry

By California State University, Bakersfield

December 4^th, 2024

Students experiencing food insecurity or a housing crisis will soon be able to get help for all their needs from a single place on campus.

California State University, Bakersfield held a groundbreaking ceremony on Tuesday to celebrate the construction of a new modular building just north of the Student Union that will house the Basic Needs Department and a Food Pantry that will be quadruple the size of its current location. The facility is expected to open next spring.

“We’re really excited to be breaking ground on our new building today. This has been a long time coming,” said Basic Needs Director Dr. Jason Watkins. “This location will serve as a one-stop shop where students can access the Food Pantry, receive assistance with CalFresh, get emergency housing and other campus and community resources necessary for academic success.”

The project has been in the works since 2020, when Dr. Watkins began having conversations with Student Services about the need for a larger space for the Food Pantry, which first opened in 2017. The pantry manages to serve an average of 800 students, faculty and staff each week in the small building it’s currently housed in.

“We like to think we are small but mighty,” Dr. Watkins said. “We realized the need is greater than we had expected. We also saw this as a tremendous opportunity for us to meet the needs of students and to help students be successful in and out of the classroom.”

Associated Students Inc. President Erin Pruitt said she enjoys seeing the Food Pantry receiving more support and hopes the new facility will allow it to serve even more students.

“This Food Pantry is so crucial to our community and to our students here,” she said. “We are the breadbasket of the world, yet so many of our students face food insecurity and so many of our community members are facing food insecurity.”

Pruitt hopes that with the Basic Needs Department having more of a physical presence on campus and more visibility, more students will take advantage of the Food Pantry and other services provided by the department.

“You have students that feel ashamed to come and say that they need to get food or these other resources, or you have other students that think to themselves, ‘I don’t want to take away from the students who probably need it more than me,’” she said. “You shouldn’t feel ashamed of that, and you shouldn’t also feel like you don’t deserve the food, because it is for you.”

Pruitt said she’s looking forward to seeing what impact the new hub will have on students in meeting their needs.

“I'm just so excited to see how this is going to change, seeing the Food Pantry going from a little c-train to now this huge modular building. It’ll be amazing to watch and interact with students as they get to know the new facility.”

Andrea Gutierrez has been working in the Food Pantry as a graduate student leader after transferring to CSUB this semester. She said she’s excited about the opportunity to work in the new building next year and the possibility of being able to help more students.

“It’s been great. I get to help people on a different level than I ever have before,” she said. “We’re all excited to have Basic Needs centralized so students don’t have to go across campus to get help or ask questions. It’ll also be nice having a bigger space for more students to come in.”

As the university celebrated the start of work on the new hub Tuesday, President Vernon B. Harper Jr. said his mind goes to students who worry about whether they’re going to have something to eat and whether they’ll be able to get through their classes while hungry.

“These are rights that our students have, and these rights create a foundation for them to achieve things in the classroom, to reach the graduation stage, to support and elevate their families and elevate this community,” said Dr. Harper. “This particular building that we’re about to put a shovel in the ground for is a milestone of respect for those students, and a recognition of the fact that the mission of the university is changing.”

Dr. Harper said that CSUB has had to get out of thinking about the university’s footprint as being defined by the physical boundaries of the campus and focus more on how outside factors such as access to food, housing and technology impact students’ ability to learn and succeed. The new Basic Needs hub reflects that focus on serving the student as a whole, not just academically.

“Whatever our students need, we must meet that need so that they can get to the stage and graduate and support their families in this community. And our students deserve this facility,” Dr. Harper said. “We’re proud to be able to move that footprint out to support our students any way possible.”