By Jacqueline Hlavenka
Dishing out an array of different foods-ranging from penne ala vodka to plain white rice-the University’s Catholic-based student organization, the Newman Club, held an unconventional banquet on Wednesday in the Student Center Greenhouse to portray world hunger in a new way.
“We are here today because more than one billion people live in poverty,” said Christina Martin, a member of Newman Club, opening the ceremony. “Eight hundred fifty-million people suffer from chronic hunger. A child dies from hunger or a preventable disease every 2.9 seconds. That’s 30,000 children a day.”
Using a model set by Oxfam America, a non-profit organization that educates about international poverty on a local level, each student who attended the banquet donated $3 and received a ticket at random that read low, middle or high income. Those who received a “low income” ticket were required to sit on the floor, “middle income” individuals sat on chairs and the “high income” students were welcomed to sit at a table near a full-banquet of food.
Separated into three tiers, the banquet itself featured catered foods such as chicken marsala, pasta and salad in the first area, sandwiches, water and soda in the second, and rice and beans in the third section. Each designated area, based on the ticket received, was designed to symbolize how hunger is divided worldwide-the poor have little access to nutritious foods, the middle class are stable, and the upper class have the greatest availability to healthy, sanitary foods. “Low income” tickets ate rice to symbolize their daily reality-whereas the “wealthy” tickets were allowed to eat from the banquet of hot catered foods.
“It really put people in a different position,” Chelsea Chrostowski, publicity chair of Newman Club, said. “Some people were upset they had the rice, and it got people to realize what a luxury it was that others had hot chicken and pasta.”
According to Oxfam America, the organization itself does not “recreate” the many complex ways poverty manifests itself, but provides a metaphor for how food and other resources are inequitably distributed in the world.
“As each of us walked in the door here today, we drew our lot at random. Look around, and you can see that equality and balance don’t exist here,” Martin said.
Megan Ciccarello, president of Newman Club, said the event has been a tradition for the organization, holding a large symbolic value that helps students to visualize class divide on a global scale.
“When I was a freshman, I participated in a hunger banquet, and it’s a tradition the Newman Club has [had] for about six to seven years,” Ciccarello said. “Last year, we didn’t get to do one because it never came through, but this year we wanted to bring it back.”
Though the banquet did not go into all the problems associated with lack of access to clean food, water and health care, Oxfam’s model provides a basis for community-based work that raises awareness and challenges national laws and policies about poverty.
“It made it easier to visualize what I was already aware of,” said George Pottanat, a senior pre-med student. “The world is organized with very few at the top, more people in the middle class and the majority are poor. It helped to show how things work.”
Students who received a “low income” ticket at Hunger Banquet stayed on the floor and ate rice and beans to symblize world poverty.