WHAT IS THE STUDENT SUPPLY CLOSET?
The student supply closet is a space designed to help any undergraduate and seminarian students access any items that they need and otherwise have limited access to.
Accessible from the door to the basement of Carnegie Hall, the Student Supply Closet is located in room CL008 in the Cleveland Annex. The Student Supply Closet provides at no cost to individuals nonperishable foods (mac n cheese bowls, ramen, cereal, oatmeal, granola bars etc.), toiletries (toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant, shampoo, body wash), laundry detergent, feminine hygiene products, school supplies (notebooks, pens, pencils, etc.). Any currently enrolled undergraduate student of the College of Arts & Sciences and graduate students of the School of Theology at The University can come into the closet anytime on any day between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. (the hours of the building), scanning their Student ID to open the door. Once inside, they are welcome to take whatever items they may need from the shelves, while being considerate of the others who use the closet.
STARTING WITH A CURIOUS QUESTION
The junior cohort of the Bonner and Canale Leaders program participate in innovative research projects called issue briefs, wherein they solicit research questions from community partner organizations in the local area to address community-identified problems. One such question came from the Community Action Committee (CAC) director at the time Rev. David Goodpaster: “What does food insecurity look like on Sewanee’s campus?” The question was born from Goodpaster’s observations that there might be barriers keeping students experiencing food insecurity from utilizing the CAC’s food pantry, just located in downtown Seanee at the St. Mark and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. In spring 2022, the group of students who investigated this topic recommended various best practices to address food access on Sewanee’s campus. This became foundational for one senior in the Certificate for Civic and Global Leadership’s capstone project. Anne Dobson Ball (C’23) spent her senior year visiting other college campuses to tour their pantries, collecting data on Sewanee’s student financial need, surveying her peers about how they are able to access food without transportation and when the few on-campus dining options, including McClurg dining hall, and eventually presented the idea of an on-campus supply closet to the Vice Chancellor’s cabinet, who were enthusiastically in support of the idea.
HOW IT WORKS
Opening in fall 2023, the supply closet opened Homecoming Weekend, with a ribbon cutting ceremony. Through partnerships with other food security agencies, the supply closet primarily stocks its shelves with food items donated with the CAC or bought through the Second Harvest of Middle Tennessee. Any non-food items are collected through in-kind donations or purchased using donated funds from private donors. The closet is managed by two Canale interns, Mary Margaret Lemburg, C’26 and Price Pennington, C’25, and Morgan Jennings, Coordinator for Student Programming in the Office of Civic Engagement.
The Supply Closet is co-sponsored by the following departments and organizations: Office of Civic Engagement, Office of the Dean of Students, All Saints’ Chapel, Center for Student Success, Office of Environmental Stewardship and Sustainability, Office of University Advancement, Business Services, Office of Inclusive Excellence, Community Action Committee, and Office of Global Citizenship.
To donate or learn more about how you can support the Student Supply Closet please visit our website.
