The UT Outpost received almost five times the amount of food items compared to last year during the annual food drive competition against the University of Oklahoma Food Pantry leading up to the annual Red River Rivalry football game. 

The Red River Food Fight is an annual food drive in which the UT and OU food pantries compete to raise the most food donations. Last year, UT lost the competition by about 2,800 pounds, but this year, the gap was only about 560 pounds. Despite the increase in donations, the UT Outpost lost the competition for the third year in a row.

The competition began Sept. 2 and ended Oct. 4. As the donations helped stock the schools’ food pantries, all donated items had to be consumable, shelf-stable and donated during the competition to count. The pantries collectively gathered about 23,280 pounds of food this year, which is over a 15,700 pound increase from 2024. 

The UT Outpost collected 2,349 pounds during the Red River Food Fight in 2024, but this year, the Outpost collected almost 11,361 pounds, according to the Office of the Dean of Students. 

“We more than quadrupled the number of donations that we received,” said Valeria Martin, associate director of basic needs at the UT Outpost. “That all ends up in the hands of students.”

UT Student Government worked with student leaders to promote donations through individual drives that would go towards the Outpost, and created a social media campaign featuring athletes and other student leaders to share the event with more students. Additionally, the Outpost collaborated with the Student-Athlete Advisory Council to get donation bins placed at athletic events. 

Martin said the University Panhellenic Council and the Outpost’s Amazon wishlist were major contributors to the donations.

“We worked with the Texas Exes, our alumni association, to send out our Amazon wishlist in their newsletters to the different chapters and networks of alumni,” Martin said. “The day after they sent out the first newsletter, we had a mountain of packages show up at UT Outpost, which was so exciting.” 

The OU Food Pantry experienced a similar growth in donations this year. Last year, they received 5,184 pounds of food, and this year, they received 11,920 pounds. The increase in donations was due to recent partnerships with OU Athletics and student government, said Royce Coleman, the student organizational leader of the OU Food Pantry Student Association. He said Crest, a local grocer, also donated to OU during the competition. 

Martin said she hopes to expand internal University partnerships with academic departments to increase engagement. She also wants to venture outside the University by partnering with larger grocery stores during the competition. 

“I’m incredibly proud of our UT community, our UT Outpost staff and anyone who was involved in supporting it, because it was super helpful for the pantry,” Martin said. “Even though we maybe didn’t win this year … now we have new strategies and new ideas to do it again.”