Students get a taste of poverty at hunger banquet

Students participating in Hunger and Homelessness Action Week were able to get a taste of what poverty is like this past Thursday.

Participants in the annual Oxfam Hunger Banquet paid $3 or brought in three cans of food for admission to the event and upon arrival were randomly separated into three different groups; they included a high-income, a middle-income and a low-income group, said Rheal Radwany, a freshman marketing major who was one of the hosts for the event.

Only 15 percent of guests at the event were selected to be in the high-income group. Members of this section were given a full meal along with dessert and water or lemonade. They were also given tables to dine at.

For the middle-income group, which was 35 percent of the total number of guests, they were seated in the back area of Dewberry Hall and were separated by a barrier from the high-income group and given a meal of rice and beans.

Most guests who attended the event, however, were placed in the low-income group. They sat on the floor on top of newspapers and were only given a small amount of rice and water to eat, according to Radwany.

“I think it was a really wonderful event because it gave people an opportunity to experience the injustices in the world. Instead of telling them how it would feel to be in poverty we showed them, which is an important thing to do because it will last longer than anything we could have said,” Radwany said.

To add another layer to the event, guests were asked to fast for 24-hours prior to the event to truly demonstrate what it means to live in poverty.

Although some participants may have started out as middle-income, later they may have been moved to the low-income sector. The creators of the banquet wanted to show that income levels often can change at the drop of a hat, such as in situation when someone loses their job or when the economy takes a turn for the worst.

“We tried to give people a feel for how it would feel to have something unfair like that happen [to them],” said Radwany.

The event which was put together by the Freshmen Scholars program under the Honors College had about 170 people in attendance.

Also present at the event was Amnesty International and Heifer International, a group that places farm animals with families in poverty so that they can have a sustainable source of income.