WASHINGTON, D.C. — Xavier University alumna Destinee Kerr remembers being a broke freshman, barely scraping by to pay a phone bill and her out-of-state tuition. 

She dreamed of attending the Bayou Classic, an annual Thanksgiving weekend event and football game in New Orleans. While Kerr always wanted to go, she could never afford it, let alone a flight home to Kansas City, Missouri, to spend the holidays with her family. 

“My freshman year, I didn’t have anybody there,” she said. “My sophomore year, you know, we had ‘Friendsgiving,’ we had fun.” 

The 2024 graduate still lives in New Orleans and for the second year in a row, she’s hosting the second annual Taste of Home, an HBCU Friendsgiving for students in the New Orleans area.

As this year’s Thanksgiving travel season is expected to be the busiest in 15 years, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, some college students are opting to stay on or around campus.  

Some can’t afford to travel back and forth for both Thanksgiving and Christmas break. Others say the break is too short as they prepare for final exams in December. Even colleges have found creative ways to celebrate the holidays while providing hot meals for students in need. 

Last year, after Kerr graduated from Xavier, she decided that she wanted to do something for the broke college students like herself, she said. 

“I know what it’s like to not have food, to not have a meal, you know, to not even be around anybody,” Kerr said. 

In just a week, Kerr and her network planned the first Friendsgiving last year, serving food and having a DJ for students to enjoy. 

This year, it’s taken months of planning, student ambassadors from New Orleans’ HBCU campuses, and several sponsors to organize the Friendsgiving happening on Tuesday, Nov. 25. 

Good vibes and good food

Just under 500 miles away, in Atlanta, Kylie McCleary was preparing for her third Thanksgiving at Clark Atlanta University. She’s already been home this semester and wanted to save money and time when it came to traveling. 

While Friendsgiving at the cafe — short for cafeteria — has already passed (it was on Monday, Nov. 24), this year McCleary, who is 20, has her eyes set on running a half-marathon on Thanksgiving this Thursday, something she wants to try to explore the area more. 

“It was a good vibe, the food was really good, and they let me take extra,” she recalled. 

For the past three years, the native of Kansas City, Kansas, has chosen to spend the short Thanksgiving break with other students on campus. At the cafe, she’s still able to eat cranberry sauce, turkey, and pumpkin pie, as others will do with their families on Thursday.

The first time she attended Friendsgiving, she was a freshman and didn’t know anyone. Friendly volunteers were serving the students, McCleary said. They asked her about her major and made it feel like home. 

McCleary is the sustainability and nutrition and wellness intern for Sodexo campus services, where she creates content, flyers and wellness events. When she was a sophomore and now as a junior, she has been able to be a part of making campus special for students away from home for the holidays. Although data isn’t available on how many students stay on campus, McCleary said she’s seen an increase. 

In Washington, D.C., Ayanna Smith‐Taylor, a second-year physics major at Howard University, said she’s already gone home to Houston during a long weekend in October. She and her mom decided that the weekend would act as her “Thanksgiving break,” she said. 

The cost of flights for Smith-Taylor isn’t the problem, but traveling across the country for a few short days wasn’t worth traveling back and forth between Washington and Houston for Thanksgiving and Christmas. 

She plans to study over the break and stop by the cafeteria to attend the university faculty’s Thanksgiving celebration. 

When asked what changed her mind, she had one word: finals.

“Actually, it’s my math final,” she said Monday, the last day of class before the break. She was heading to the library to start her studying for upcoming finals next month. 

Several of the commuting students at Howard have invited her to their homes in the Washington metro area and to spend holidays with their families. If not, she’s planning to check out the cafe’s Thanksgiving meals as well. 

This will be her first Thanksgiving in Washington as a Howard student, but she assured Capital B that she can cook and that her dorm has a full kitchen. 

The power of building community and networking

Across the country, colleges are hosting Thanksgiving-themed meals for students staying on campus for the holidays. Yen Lam, the assistant director of student health services at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, Florida, told Capital B that the Salvation Army reached out to them to serve hot meals for college students this Thursday. With the recent government shutdown that lasted more than a month, Lam said that more organizations have reached out to see how they can support FAMU and its campus pantry, which feeds students and the surrounding community. 

“A lot of groups have reached out to us, saying that they want to donate,” Lam said. The Student Health Services at FAMU is working to address inquiries from the community. 

Recently, Second Harvest Food Bank donated 25,000 pounds of food. 

The pantry is open to the Tallahassee community on Wednesdays, its busiest day, when staff have seen up to 300 people come in for their groceries for the week. 

Back in New Orleans, Kerr is finishing preparations for Tuesday’s Friendsgiving. The GoFundMe for the HBCU Friendsgiving with Xavier, Dillard University and Southern University students has reached more than $4,800 of its $5,000 goal as of Tuesday, the day of the event. For students who attend, they will also receive tickets to attend the Bayou Classic and the Battle of the Bands this week. 

This year marks the 52nd annual Thanksgiving football game between Grambling State University and Southern University. The game is expected to attract more than 60,000 attendees and over 200,000 visitors during the weekend, celebrating HBCU culture. 

“When it came to meeting sponsors and reaching out, I’m that same person reaching out on Instagram and more,” Kerr said. “I’m going to reach out to you, I’m going to email you, I’m going to be in your face about it, because I want these students to understand we are a part [of the community], we are of the community.” 

Kerr said it’s been amazing to see the fruits of her networking labor in preparing for the event. The HBCU Friendsgiving in New Orleans has secured new sponsors such as Black Girl Vitamins, Second Harvest of South Louisiana, the Bayou Classic, and more.

She’s also looped in current students at nearby HBCUs to help with networking and event promotion, which requires serving as a student ambassador for Friendsgiving. 

“They just want somewhere to call home,” Kerr said of those who go to college away from home. “They just want to be able to, you know, have that space, and I’m able to give them that space.”