The Just Us Graduate Student Dinners emerged from a recognition of the quiet crisis of food insecurity and isolation many graduate students-especially Global Majority, low-income, first-generation, and international students-experience.
Academia often disembodies students, extracting them from their cultural food traditions and support networks while offering little institutional concern for whether they are nourished in mind and body.
Just Us has with a dual goal: to surface mutual aid networks that already exist among students and to advocating for institutional change to better support graduate student food security. Through shared meals and facilitated conversations, participants will unearth stories of food traditions, articulate their needs, and organize for concrete changes-whether through meal plans, stipends, or alternative food access programs. By partnering with campus affinity centers and guest facilitators who offer their own food stories as an invitation to dialogue, Just Us seeks to be more than just a meal-it is a movement toward re-rooting students through a sense of belonging, collective care, and food justice advocacy within the university.
Read more about our stories at urbanfoodstories.com and check out our grad student food resource map at bit.ly/gradfoodmap
Upcoming event dates are:
Sobremesa: Solidarity, Survival, and Shared Meals - LatinX Center - Wednesday, October 15th, 6-8pm
Cycles: Cooking, Eating, Feeding - The Women's Center - Wednesday, October 29th, 6-8pm
Nourishing the Body, Nourishing the Soul - Tuesday, November 4th, 6-8pm
Feeding the Body, Freeing the Self - LGBTQ Center - Wednesday, November 12th, 6-8pm
Kamayan: Eating with Hands - Asian American Center - Wednesday, December 3rd, 6-8pm
The Table We Build - First-Generation Collective - Monday, December 8, 5:30-7:30pm
Slow Food, Slow Eating - International Students - TBD
Please RSVP at: https://bit.ly/justusdinner
For any questions or concerns contact justusgrads@gmail.com
