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University of Wisconsin System Regent Karen Walsh offered a $2,000 donation at a ribbon-cutting Feb. 11 for the new food pantry developed by the Oshkosh Student Association on the UW Oshkosh campus.

“Your generation is teaching our generation every day about the problems of the world,” she said. “You have the courage to talk about them, but to do more than talk, to put the talk into action.”

Walsh, who holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism from UW-Madison, said it’s not as though there wasn’t hunger when she was an undergraduate in the 1970s. But just like mental health that have always been there, they just weren’t talked about.

“Thank you so much for having the foresight to do this for your fellow students,” she said of the pantry in Reeve Memorial Union’s Titan Underground named The Cabinet.

The donation came from her family foundation, Berbeewalsh Foundation, dedicated to human and animal health and welfare.

Oshkosh Student Association Vice President Ian McDonald said the food pantry project was years in the making and has now become reality.

Joy Evans, who has done research on food insecurity and is student director of the pantry, was ecstatic about Walsh’s donation.

“I never would have thought that when I started here I’d be part of something so grand and so impactful to this campus,” she said before cutting a large yellow ribbon to signify the opening of The Cabinet.

She called food insecurity a largely “underestimated issue that is a big deal” to students impacted.

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