House Debates Helping College Students With Food, Hygiene Challenges 

Some West Virginia college students face challenges in getting enough food and living a basic clean and healthy life. House Bill 4081 would provide those students some help. However, the bill is an unfunded mandate that generated some bi-partisan house floor debate. 

Addressing student food insecurities along with health and hygiene inadequacies are the two goals of the proposed Higher Education Health and Aid Grant program.  

HB 4081 would be funded through the student advisory council of the state’s Higher Education Policy Commission (HEPC). No public monies are provided. The bill sponsor, Del. Jimmy Willis, R-Brooke, said he remembers many fellow students with basic collegiate struggles. 

“When the HEPC student advisory council came to me with this bill, I saw it as an opportunity to give them a little bit of help,” WIllis said. “Not with state dollars, with potential grant funding, private, public. The opinions of a future legislature, maybe with state dollars, I don’t know. All I’m trying to do here is give kids a leg up to help them.”

Del. Chris Anders, R-Berkeley, was among several opposed to the proposal that he said could end up funded by taxpayer dollars.

“What it does create is a mechanism, the framework for future appropriations,” Anders said. “It authorizes a program first and possibly sends the bill to the taxpayers later. This is how the government grows. This is how these programs become permanent spending. This is how budgets get bloated. We should know what a program costs possibly before we create it.”

Del. Kayla Young, D-Kanawha, supported the proposal she said helps struggling students to succeed.

“If you don’t know, college kids can’t apply for SNAP unless they’re working 20 hours a week,” Young said. “They can’t get it. They have to get a meal plan. It’s expensive. I find it sick that some people in this room need a piece of paper to get up and talk about not wanting to help kids that need food or band aids to be able to go to college.”

Del. Elias Coop-Gonzalez, R-Randolph, opposed the proposed program, saying a college education is a privilege and not an entitlement.

“If you need to work to sustain yourself, you can take it over five or six years,” Coop-Gonzalez said. “You can go to community college. You can make it work. We do need to have some assistance programs, but those are for kids that are in need. Those are for people with disabilities. They’re not for able bodied adults.”

The bill sponsor was asked if foreign students, specifically Chinese students, would be eligible for the aid. Willis said if they are here legally, then yes, they would be eligible. 

Del. John Williams, D-Monongalia, said the many first generation West Virginia college students desperately need this kind of basic help.

“This is about supporting them in that dream and that trial to better themselves so they can join the workforce in West Virginia,” Williams said. “The workforce that we say we want to develop. To work the jobs that we say we want to bring here, and we can’t give them some Wonder Bread and a stick of deodorant? It’s crazy.”

The proposed Higher Education Health and Aid Grant program passed the House 71 to 22, with six members absent, and now goes to the Senate.