Humber North’s Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences is celebrating student appreciation month.
FLAS organized a free food event for all Humber students starting Feb. 5, 2025, till April 15, 2025.
The event will be organized on the 5th floor of Learning Resource Commons from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Anyone is everyone is welcome and there is no registration or first come first serve.
“Just come and enjoy the food,” said Maria Lucia Di Placito, an English professor at FLAS.
Placito said, students come and ask them what they have to do to get themselves enrolled they just tell them, “nothing”.
“We want the students to know that we are here for them,” she said. Placito said student appreciation month is a repeating event from last year and the faculty plans to organize more of them this year.
She said the event launches in February of each year and is meant to spread awareness about what FLAS is and what they do and how much they think about the students.
Placito said the faculty has recognized that food insecurity is one of the main issues students face and they want to do their bit to help students.
She said FLAS has another grab-and-go event for some days during the month where students can just grab the food and go, and “the cart is emptied every day,” she said.
“I don’t know what’s in that ready-to-eat food,” Sukhmanpreet Kaur from Health and fitness course at Humber said.
Kaur said she does not eat a lot of things due to religious constraints and does not know if she can trust ready-to-go food. She said it is ramen, and it might contain things that will hurt her religious beliefs.
“I always cook myself, vegetarian options are so less in Canada, and I don’t want to eat something that I should not be eating by mistake,” she said.
Placito said FLAS has paid special attention to taking care of these things.
“We’re literally there at Costco, reading every single label,” she said.
Placito said the faculty understands that religion plays a big role in food insecurity, and they are trying their best to not let that impact their motive.
“We in fact have two vegetarian options and one chicken option,” she said.
But she said their budget is slim.
“Our senior dean, Dr. John Stilla, he announced a budget and made a committee to organize events that demonstrate student appreciation,” Placito said.
She said the committee is formed by her, Candace Iron, Jessica Freitag and Anne Lyden in 2024 and they have been working on the set budget.
“If we can all pull-in the efforts and invest a little bit of time and resources, we can take care of a need that is ever-so-real,” Placito said.
She said the faculty plans on organizing more such events and that too more frequently to do as much as they can to help the students.
Their next event “chit-chat” will be happening in March and students can keep an eye out for more events on their page.
