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Groups look to start community gardens as food insecurity grows in East Lansing
The MSU Student Food Bank is assisting double the amount of people they were one year ago. As prices rise, so does food insecurity among students. While there are some programs already available for students, the Spartan Housing Cooperatives and other RSO groups are considering starting a community garden.
Located at the Olin Health Center on campus, the MSU food bank now serves about 1,200 orders a month, twice as many as what they served in October of 2023. Jamie Hutchinson, the associate director of engagement for university health and wellbeing, said that any student can be assisted if they have received food benefits like SNAP.
Most students report using the bank so that they can afford other bills, she said. After paying for rent, books, classes and supporting dependents, food may be hard to afford.
MSU’s food bank partners with several different people to serve the community, including the Greater Lansing Area Food Bank, the RISE program and the Student Organic Farm. Hutchinson said whenever items are out at the bank, they have enough support to offer replacements. Donors that support the food bank and their partners have been sufficient enough for the bank to obtain more food as the need increases, she said.
While the MSU Food Bank assists in lessening food insecurity, Hutchinson said the bank is not going to fix all food insecurity issues. The bank hopes to cut grocery bills in half for students, but some students need more help.
The Green Team is hoping to partner with other organizations to help their gardens and possibly be a part of a campus community garden.
They’re also currently working to make connections with groups and set a foundation for co-op community gardens while spreading awareness about food insecurity.
State News alum publishes novel inspired by experience at MSU
As a sports reporter for The State News, Candace Johnson, covered various MSU athletics, from track to basketball to gymnastics. However, after the 1989 sit-in, she became part of a series of stories about race on campus that was published in the spring of 1990. Dubbed “Separate State: MSU in Color,” the series covered topics of interracial marriage, racism in fraternity recruitment and adapting to new “racial environments” as the minority student population increased.
Her assignment, which later became a front-page story, focused on students who were minorities in high school. The article contained interviews with a white student who attended school in Detroit and a Black girl adopted by a white couple.
Inspired, Johnson wrote an accompanying column to share her experience growing up in Fennville, Michigan, a predominantly white town an hour away from Kalamazoo. Although she enjoyed her time as a cheerleader and member of the student council, there were only two other Black students in her graduating class; one was her brother and the other moved to Fennville a year into high school.
Of that student, she wrote: “She did not have an identity crisis the way I did. I knew I was African-American on the outside, but if you were trapped in a dark room with me, you’d swear I was white.” Both stories appeared in an edition of The State News on May 14, 1990.
That was when Johnson realized she’d stumbled onto something: Others weren’t aware that identities like hers existed. That idea turned into something greater, a novel which was self-published in December of 2024.
“The Kitchen Isn’t Where You Cook” follows Marisa Logan, a Black woman raised in the fictional small town of Petersville in southwestern Michigan. Like Johnson, the main character also attends Michigan State University and begins her cultural awakening, learning how to navigate her identity as someone who’d always be classified as “different.”
The title is inspired by an interaction that occurs in the novel between Marisa and her cousin, who teases her for not knowing what a “kitchen” is.
The divide between Black and white culture is a prominent theme both in the novel and Johnson’s personal life.
In her column, Johnson said that arriving at MSU was the beginning of her “cultural awareness.”
After getting married and starting a family, what finally drove Johnson to finish the novel was reading Quincy Jones’ autobiography, “Q,” though she’d started it years prior. In his book, he urges those with a God-given talent or purpose to pursue it, lest their life feel unfulfilled. So, Johnson pursued.
Johnson’s purpose was to highlight the experiences of other Black people in towns like hers: “We exist. We live in small-town America in the Midwest.”
This book is available wherever good books are found.
Based on original reporting by Anna Barnes and Ria Gupta.