Sayre Paradiso is the Health and Wellness Services Office Manager for Tompkins Cortland Community College in Dryden, as well as the Manager for the on-campusPanther Pantry and TC Community Closet.Sayre is also chair of the Tompkins County Food Distribution Network and a participant in the Food Bank’s Community Advocates Training program.
In her own words, Sayre shares how the pantry fits with the larger college community, and how her pantry experiences as a student inform how the pantry operates today.
When I was a student here, if it were not for the pantry on campus, which was half the size it is now, I don’t know if I would have been able to stay in school. But with the assistance of the pantry, I was able to take an internship here and drop one of my jobs.
I’ve only been working here since 2019, and it has been the wildest ride, but if I hadn’t had the pantry while I was a student, I wouldn’t have been able to get this far.
I think about that a lot.
There is this weird myth that when you’re in college, everything’s cool. Everything’s handled. A lot of our students don’t qualify for SNAP because of their family dynamics but they need the help. And we’re in this food desert here in Dryden. We have very little public transportation in our community.
So we’re bringing students to this campus who are used to having public transportation, are used to having a bodega that sells produce down the street from them, or from rural areas with farmer’s markets. We just don’t have that here in Dryden. Everyone thinks about Ithaca and how wonderful it is, but it’s such a small part of Tompkins County. It’s hard to be on the edges of the county. You’re kind of trapped.
We have realized that our pantry is a value-add to coming to college and we use it to promote higher education and Tompkins Cortland specifically. Our pantry is part of every college tour; it’s part of conversations with parents when they stop in.
When parents come up and see this bucolic campus, I think it helps them to know there are resources here that help take care of the students living in the dorms, providing for their families, living with their grandparents, or on their own and busting their butts to get through here.
We have opened our pantry to staff and faculty as well, to lessen the stigma. If your favorite professor is in there grabbing a bag of potatoes, it’s going to be a little more comfortable for you to get what you need to help your family.
We have staff and faculty who have their children in the daycare, and they come up with their little kids.
We’re helping our community understand that food is a basic need and right.
We’re raising a generation of people who go out in the world and think, “people use these services and it’s not a big deal.” We’re helping to aid in the destigmatization of accessing help.
We’re just trying to make it so people feel comfortable asking for what they need. And if they’re not sure what they need, they can go to someone and say, ‘help me figure this out’ and have their voices heard. It’s important.
When we have someone helping with SNAP, they don’t think anything of it. They’re here, accessing a resource that we’re providing.
Nobody wants a handout. People might need help but they aren’t going out of their way to go through the process. It’s not fun; it’s hard. It’s administratively intensive. Nobody would choose to live a life that’s harder than it has to be.
You can read this and other stories from around the Southern Tier in our quarterly newsletter, The Harvester, on our website.
If you or someone you know needs assistance in finding food, you can find resources on our FIND FOOD page.