University shuffles campus resources as SOAR Center closes physical location
Founded in 2018, the Students Organizing for Access to Resources (SOAR) Center served as a volunteer-run location for students to obtain items like food, clothing and textbooks. Until 2025, the center served its purpose on the third floor of the Putnam University Center, but its doors shut at the end of the 2024-25 academic year.
However, some remnants of the Center are still present with branded signage and on the occasional syllabus. This caused questions of the Center’s status to arise.
The SOAR Center created a taskforce to address the community’s concerns ahead of the 2025-26 academic year, and the task force presented their findings to the Associated Students of Willamette University (ASWU) senate last April. According to the Center’s Instagram, the mission of the taskforce was to “contribute to the growth and sustainability of the operations and management of the SOAR Center.” At the meeting, the taskforce presented their findings to the senate, stating that the biggest constraints they faced were the inability to disperse the products they offered and how the Center was funded.
Assistant Vice President and Dean of Students, Heather Kropf, and the Assistant Dean for Community Care and Inclusion, Justin Leibowitz, confirmed what the taskforce had found.
Leibowitz, who had previously served the SOAR Center in an advisory capacity, stated that the Center “had a partnership with Marion Polk Food Share… and we were taking food from [them] and ultimately throwing it away.”
Data available on Willamette’s Institutional Research website, shows that approximately 23% of nearly 1,800 students qualified for federal assistance as of 2025. The Bearcat Pantry, the SOAR Center’s resource for food insecurity, was made to serve those students. Over time, they saw a decrease in usage from 257 to 21 students per school year from the 2019-20 to 2024-25 school year. “I believe other programs (books and clothing) follow similar trends,” Kropf stated later in an email.
Over its seven years of operation, the SOAR Center was funded by the Community Action Fund for Equity and Sustainability (CAFES). The main initiative of CAFES is to finance new, student-led community projects every year.
“CAFES eventually had advised us to say ‘we are prepared to stop funding the Center because the spirit of CAFES is… not really meant to be a[n] annual expense,” Leibowitz said. Due to this change, the Center no longer has consistent funding, and the resources it once provided have since been shifted to other initiatives on campus and in the Salem community.
Although no longer present in the physical SOAR Center, resources can be found via Willamette’s website, as well as on other parts of campus and within the city of Salem.
Leibowitz and Kropf shared that clothing provided for professional purposes such as job interviews was taken to the Willamette University School of Law, as the law students were “the main demographic of folks that used it.” What students of the law school did not take was then donated, according to Kropf.
Hatfield Library provides free and low-cost textbooks through the Willamette Textbook Collection. “Our staff in student affairs did work over the summer of 2025 to move the textbook drive over to the library,” Kropf said.
For students seeking food assistance, both Kropf and Leibowitz pointed out that the Willamette University Student Resource Page provides a number of links to nearby food pantries and assistance programs in Oregon.
“Pretty substantive resources [exist] that are not one size fits all… what may apply for one, may not be eligible for someone else… but there might be something,” stated Leibowitz. He shared that one example of this is The Willamette Emergency Fund. According to its website, students can request financial support for “emergencies, special programs, test prep, supplies, unexpected travel, or events.” This fund is meant to be a last resort and will not affect annual financial aid awards.
Although the SOAR Center’s physical location will no longer be in operation, Kropf explains that there might be future potential for a club or action team on campus based around providing aid to students.
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