Bagels and coffee at Hodge Hall. S’mores at the Indiana Memorial Union. Baked! cookies at Franklin Hall. Wings at McNutt Quadrangle. Red Bull in various campus locations. Students in the ‘Free Food On Campus (FFC @ IUB)’ GroupMe were alerted to these food freebies over the course of one week, with, most of the time, updates coming when the food ran out.
The group chat relies on its almost 2000 members to announce when and where there’s free food around campus, usually sent with pictures.
FFC@IUB was created by IU senior Sam Wagner, a transfer student who formed the group chat because there wasn’t anything on campus to alert students of upcoming events.
“I transferred here, and there were all these events,” Wagner said. “And I was just like, ‘Oh, I guess I'll just go to them’. And then I was missing a whole bunch for like a year, so I decided to make the group.”
The chat began small, in August 2023, but skyrocketed to having around one thousand members within its first semester, Wagner said.
Will Gardiner, a junior, joined when there were only around 100 people. Gardiner said that he was scrolling through the GroupMe groups available to IU students and stumbled upon FFC@IUB.
Gardiner became active enough in the group chat that he was offered admin powers. These days, that mostly entails kicking out bots.
If a post — such as someone selling tickets — falls under the category of “not free, not food”, it will probably be removed, Gardiner said. He said he suspects there are a lot of bots in the chat.
“I think today it's got, you know, approaching 2000 members,” Gardiner said. “A dubious number of them are actually real people.”
The large number of members proved to be an issue in the April 2024 IU Student Government elections, in an interesting twist in the group chat’s history.
Gardiner said that the UNITED party had sent messages to the GroupMe in such a manner that the contact counted as improper use of telecommunication under the election bylaws. UNITED, which had won the popular vote, was disqualified by the IUSG Supreme Court as a result.
“When the election started, it had about 800 and change (people) and then it leaped over 1,000,” Gardiner said. “And we had to go through and copy down every name that was in the chat. So, it was an interesting, interesting moment in history. But other than that, it's been mostly chill. I mean, just this morning (Feb. 3) it was, ‘Hey, look, there's free bagels at Hodge Hall.’”
Aside from Hodge Hall, Gardiner said some of the most common spots with free food are the lower level of the IMU near the food courts, the area outside of Ballantine Hall and near the Sample Gates.
In a pinned message in the group chat, Wagner said that one of the goals of FFC@IUB is to boost the turnout for the student organizations handing out free food.
“It's good to just go and show up and then hear what they have to say,” Wagner said. “And then you can stick around for food. Not necessarily just go get free food and then leave.”
Gardiner also discouraged a dine-and-dash approach.
“Part of it is linking people to the source of the free food,” he said. “And that way you can go enjoy it, yes, but it's rude, in my opinion, to just, you know, show up, grab stuff and scram. That's just mooching.”
Andrew Hugo, a sophomore, said it’s easier to find events via the group chat than on BeInvolved, a platform that hosts information about IU’s student organizations.
Hugo, like Gardiner, noted that scammers are a problem in the chat, though they don’t change his evaluation of the group’s value.
“But my overall experience has been quite positive in that I figured out that there's a lot of different clubs and activities that go on at IU that I wouldn't have otherwise heard about,” Hugo said.
Wagner said that the goal was to turn FFC@IUB into a club, though they’re still searching for a faculty advisor.
“I mean, it was supposed to be like a club that, like, works with other clubs,” Wagner said. “There's a section in the GroupMe that's specifically for the club, but we haven't had any callout meetings or anything yet.”
In the meantime, students can rely on the chat to alert them of callout meetings. The ones that offer free food, anyways.
