Students' queue at Galway University's food pantry triggers racial attack on Indian and foreign students. Indians and other foreign students in Ireland are being subjected to racist comments for taking benefits of a student-run food pantry at the University of Galway. According to The Irish Times report, the pantry, that was originally launched as an environmental initiative, was now struggling to cope up with the students’ demands, fueled by the high cost of living. Students' queue at a university in Ireland triggers racial attack against Indian and foreign students The story published by the Irish Times showed a photo that mostly had foreign students. This triggered an online storm as people started claiming that most students shown in the queue were foreign. Is it my imagination, but are most, if not all, of the students in that queue foreign? Is it mentioned in The Irish Times article? If they are mostly foreign, then perhaps that explains the numbers turning up for free food: foreign students should be able to support themselves? Another user on X wrote, “Why are Indian students queuing up for a food bank at the University of Galway? Did they come to Ireland to get an education and not bring enough money to feed themselves?” A third post on X wrote, "This is the queue for the University of Galway students’ union food pantry, where genuinely needy students can get some basics. The entire queue, as far as I can tell, is Indian. This erosion of social trust will eventually destroy the program." The debate triggered after the Irish Times in its reports mentioned that the food pantry had to turn hundreds of students away due to higher demand which is becoming overwhelming for the food bank to fulfill, despite distributing almost €500,000-worth of food last year, as the cost-of-living crisis deepens. The pantry was established by the Donegal student Adam Mullins, who used to run it under the shed of his rented student accommodation. Mullins, who had a donated chest freezer, used to get surplus food collected from supermarkets all over Galway. Slowly, slowly, in a couple of years, other students and the University unions had come on board to support the pantry. “The cost-of-living crisis is crazy, and it massively impacts us students. You see it everywhere, and it’s getting worse,” Mullins said. “I get a random assortment of products each day. You never know what you’re going to get, but still, the students show up anyway. So there is something driving them to come to the pantry,” he said. The pantry works in collaboration with FoodCloud, a non-profit social enterprise with an objective to tackle food insecurity by redistributing surplus food from supermarkets. Shashwat Bhandari is the Associate Editor at Times Now. With 14 years of experience in the news and media industry, he understands the responsibility ... View More