Tyson House campus ministry is opening UT’s first ever on-campus food pantry.
Starting Jan. 24, Smokey’s Pantry will be open every Tuesday from 4 to 8 p.m. So UT students, faculty and staff members who struggle to make ends meet can supplement their food supplies with complimentary groceries.
Robin Lovett, an intern at Tyson House, came up with the idea of opening an on-campus food pantry due to her own experience.
“I was a low-income student at UT, and there were weeks where I didn’t have enough to eat,” Lovett said. “At the end of the week, I would have taken a whole lot of bananas from PCB and things like that. It was hard, and it made school a lot harder.”
Lovett explained that a surprisingly large number of people on campus suffer from food insecurity. Students who have families or children, low-income students and non-tenured faculty members often find themselves without enough food to eat at the end of the day.
Smokey’s Pantry is aiming to fix that.
Rev. John Tirro, chaplain of the Tyson House, said that the ministry has offered home-cooked dinners and held worship services every Sunday evening for the past twelve years.
“Feeding people is very much part of our DNA,” Tirro said. “We don’t ask qualifying questions. We don’t ask for proof of income or anything like that. Anyone who can’t make ends meet, anyone who can’t afford enough to eat at the end of the week — they’re welcome to come by.”
Tirro is not worried about people taking advantage of the no-questions-asked system.
“People abuse every system no matter what you try to do,” Tirro said. “We’re focused on caring for people … a lot of times you treat people like they’re trustworthy, and they are.”
The primary donor to the new food ministry is Fish Hospitality Pantries, started by Jim Wright 30 years ago. Fish Hospitality Pantries has three food pantries in Knoxville: one in east Knoxville, one in south Knoxville and one on Scott Avenue that serves people west of Broadway Street.
“The idea of a pantry coming into the campus community that’s accessible to students and UT employees is interesting to us, so we’re donating the first thousand pounds of food today to help kick this thing off,” Wright said. “We want everybody in our community to get enough to eat. A lot of people don’t think of students as having issues with food, but they do. So we are pleased to support Smokey’s Pantry.”
The community has also done its part to help support the effort. Members of various churches donated boxes full of food, and Messiah Lutheran Church donated all of its shelving units and food when their own food pantry closed down this week.
“Every time we’re on the news, they ask what we need, and we tell them,” Tirro said. “It seems like as soon as people hear about it, they want to help because they care about students, and they want them to be able to focus on learning. They want them to feel loved.”
John Wright and Robin Lovett helped organize the first delivery for Smokey's Pantry.
