By LORI HARMA
A revolt broke out at the Smith Family Living Center Friday night — a revolt triggered by a bowl of fruit and a blueberry bagel.
It was all in the name of learning and fund raising, an outgrowth of the fifth annual Hunger Banquet, sponsored by Students for International Development to raise money for a community lending project in Mexico.
For $5, students were greeted at the door by a host in colorful robes, and given a new name and a biography of the country they were from: “Your name is Jayen. You are from Mauritius and you make $112 a month working in a sugar mill.”
From there, students were seated either at a table dressed in silverware and crystal glasses, or at a thin blanket on the floor — all according to their First, Second or Third World status, a status determined by their country’s relative gross national product and technological development.
First World guests ate chicken, fish, lasagna, fruit and cake, while Third World guests shared paper plates of beans and rice.
“More than half the world’s population lives in abject poverty,” said keynote speaker, Dr. Lynn Curtis of Laubach Literacy International, a nonprofit organization that funds literacy programs around the world.
“Children don’t have access to food, medical care or education. In Angola alone, there are 641,000 malnourished children under the age of five. This is the great injustice of the world, and it is man-made.”
For some at the banquet, the thought of starving children drove them to extreme measures. Soon after being served, hungry Third World members began to concoct ways to smuggle or beg food from their privileged neighbors.
“I went over and showed them (the First World) what we got for all five people, and they didn’t believe me,” said Jenny Chamberlain, a sociology major, while holding down a willing, First-World “hostage.”
After being told they could try anything to obtain food, other Third-World groups made economic transactions, pretended to be military leaders, or simply rushed First-World tables, grabbing fruit bowls and cake, and running — seemingly without recourse.
“What are they going to do to make it worse,” said Heather Lawrence-Westicott, an English major who brought her one-year-old daughter to the dinner, and tried every means available to secure food for her.
“It’s like when you see women begging on the streets with their babies, and you think they’re not really in need, they’re just using their baby. That’s not always true. In this case, my baby really was hungry.”
More than just giving students a small sampling of the emotions of inequality, funds raised from the Hunger Banquet may begin to file away at real-life inequality.
Economic leverage is an important step, said Geoff Davis, a senior from Davis, Calif., in international relations who spearheaded the banking project in Guanajuato, Mexico, where the funds from the Hunger Banquet go.
Because much of the world’s poor — particularly women — lack a source of credit or collateral to take out loans and start small businesses, they cannot begin to pull themselves out of poverty.
“One woman wants a sewing machine to make clothes and sell them at the market,” Davis said. Without capital, she can’t start her business.
