www.montereycountyweekly.com december 14-20, 2023 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY 19 On a recent Thursday afternoon, The Hub at CSU Monterey Bay is buzzing. It’s a hybrid grocery store/thrift shop, and roughly a dozen students and a few staff members are grabbing bananas, spices and used shoes lined up neatly on a shelf. It’s actually more food pantry than grocery store—everything in here is free to the CSUMB community, on a limited basis. You can grab up to one item daily from Zone 1, for instance, and up to two during finals. (On this day, Zone 1 includes canned peas, enchilada sauce, and bags of pinto beans.) You can grab up to five items from Zone 2 (crackers, tortillas). Fresh produce—including curly kale, broccolini, celery—is unlimited. Junior Kris Bohrk, a Japanese student, is filling a bag with Brussels sprouts. “I used to hate Brussels sprouts until my first boss made them for me,” she says. “Just a little bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, bake at 375. It’s fantastic what you can find in here.” Last semester, Bohrk started every school day here to grab a free breakfast. That’s not uncommon for The Hub, which averages 350 “customers” a day, up from 60 one year ago. Last year, there were 16,000 visits; so far this semester, 3,600 individuals have visited 25,000 times. Some of this spike might be due to inflation and represents increasingly desperate times. Some probably comes from improvements to the space itself, which moved across the old student center to make way for El Centro, a resource space for Latino students, into a more open, inviting space. And the idea of creating a lively, inviting space—the exact opposite of whatever comes to mind when you summon “food pantry” to mind—comes from the team behind CSUMB’s Basic Needs Initiative. Joanna Snawder-Manzo, CSUMB’s care manager, started in 2015. She would receive referrals for students who needed extra support—they might be in crisis, or failing out academically. “I noticed the students were stressed because they didn’t have enough money for food and books,” she says. “There was a strong correlation between students being in distress and not having their basic needs met.” The Basic Needs Initiative has expanded to a team of three. Robyn DoCanto oversees The Hub and its student employees; Amy Zamara, the basic needs case manager, oversees a team of interns who are master’s students of social work and meet with students who need their services. The trio scrapes together funds through grants and donations—beyond their allocation of $136,000 annually from the CSU Chancellor’s Office—to make the suite of services a reality, with a budget of $200,000 this year. (CSUMB President Vanya Quiñones allocated funds for the fridge, to enable perishables to be distributed through The Hub.) The food in The Hub comes from a variety of sources, predominantly the Food Bank for Monterey County, as well as churches, occasional grocery store donations and beyond. Towers of nonperishable goods like cornbread mix, canned tomato sauce and diapers are stacked in what used to be the Starbucks, before the new student center opened. The clothing section of The Hub is heavy on kids’ attire; 1 in 5 CSUMB students are parents, Snawder-Manzo says. Up to 50 percent of students are food-insecure. If education is meant to be the great equalizer, we need to equalize education. To do that, we need to make sure that even the neediest students get their basic needs met. It’s a premise we hear about a lot in K-12 education, with initiatives like free school lunch for all—hungry kids can’t learn, the logic goes. The same logic applies in college. If students are desperate, how are they going to really dig deep into reading Socrates or comprehending that chemistry equation? It’s hard to imagine that free boxes of mac-and-cheese or bunches of kale are really going to help close the disparities that exist in higher education, but an hour in The Hub makes you think that they really can. Zamara says she recently overheard a student say that without this resource, they would never cook. “We are trying to meet them where they are at,” she says. “It’s startling how big the need is.” Sara Rubin is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@mcweekly.com. Survival Mode CSUMB’s basic needs program reveals desperation—and a simple fix. By Sara Rubin Inquiring Minds…Squid has been waiting to see what unfolds in Pacific Grove City Hall. City Council parted ways with the last city manager, Ben Harvey, in July, sending him off with $438,000. In 2022, Harvey filed harassment complaints against Councilmember Luke Coletti; an investigator confirmed three of the complaints, yet Coletti suffered no real consequences. Other P.G. employees have left or filed complaints in the last two years, and based on records acquired by the Weekly via a California Public Records Act request, Squid sees a pattern of Coletti emailing employees demanding information. It might give any city manager candidate pause. Coletti introduced a proposed ordinance on Dec. 6 that would allow councilmembers to make direct “inquiries” of employees without going through the city manager. The council voted 5-1 to approve the ordinance. Coletti posted the ordinance to Facebook, and when one astute person pointed out it was essentially codifying harassment, Coletti responded: “Inquiry, not harassment. Thank you.” Meanwhile, the City is now circulating a survey to find out what Pagrovians want in their next city manager. The first question asks what are the major challenges facing the city. Squid has one thing to say to the council: The call is coming from inside the house. Not at Home…Squid loves a race, especially when it’s not against a sea star— that’s unfair. When it comes to public office, Squid thinks a challenge is healthy for democracy. So Squid was disappointed, if not surprised, to see that District 1 County Supervisor Luis Alejo is running unopposed for a third term. In District 4, Supervisor Wendy Root Askew faces one challenger, Jeremiah Pressey, who is also running for a seat on the Monterey County Republican Central Committee. Squid wanted to learn more about who he is beyond his campaign paperwork, where he identifies himself as a “father/homemaker.” A brief search of records in Monterey County Superior Court shows that “father/homemaker” is a bit of a stretch. According to a 2019 request for a domestic violence restraining order—which was granted for three years, along with full custody of the couple’s two children and one that was, at the time, on the way—his ex wrote that he “threatened to shoot me and the children for certain sins multiple times throughout our marriage” and “said he would kill his child if gay.” When the restraining order required him to turn over firearms, he produced five weapons. “I don’t want those past allegations to deter me from being an example to my sons,” Pressey says. The Veterans Transition Center alum says his top campaign issues are housing, public safety and quality of life. For Pressey’s own family, Squid is campaigning for safety and stability. the local spin SQUID FRY THE MISSION OF MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY IS TO INSPIRE INDEPENDENT THINKING AND CONSCIOUS ACTION, ETC. If education is meant to be the great equalizer, we need to equalize education. Send Squid a tip: squid@mcweekly.com
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