This page is no longer being updated and remains online for informational and historical purposes only. The information is accurate as of the last page update.
For questions about page contents, contact the Communications Division.
Fifty-five students got the chance to experience first-hand the distribution of food in today’s world at the Oxfam Hunger Banquet, which was part of Hunger and Homelessness week held in November.
“Events like this increase student awareness to issues such as world hunger and hopefully motivate them to take further action in addressing these issues,” says Trustee Scholar Nate Parker ’08 (Milford, N.H.), a biology major who organized Hunger and Homelessness week. “We can’t let students lose contact with the world around them and the issues happening there.”
The banquet was comprised of three segments: people of the first-, second-, and third- worlds, or high-, middle-, and low-income groups, represented the distribution of wealth in the world.
Only about seven percent of those who attended were given tickets to the high-income group, which means they were served a three-course meal by a wait staff and were seated at a table with fine china. The middle-income group was served a meal of rice and beans and seated around a plain wooden table with the meal scooped from a large serving pan. The low-income group was seated on the floor with a large bowl of rice that was passed to each person to take a serving.
Before dining, “economic developments” were announced, which resulted in some people being demoted from the high-income to low-income group, and a few people moving from low-income to middle-income, and a couple even moving up to high-income.
Participating students signed up for or were invited to the banquet but did not know where they would be seated until they arrived and were given a ticket that gave them a name, job, and locale.
Campus groups in attendance included Residence Hall Council, Foundation for the Awareness and Alleviation of Poverty, two Alternative Spring Break (ASB) teams, and Delta Upsilon fraternity.
John Colatch, director of religious life and College chaplain, was the adviser for this year’s banquet.
“I have led many hunger banquets at my previous institution, but this was the first one I have been involved in at Lafayette. It went perfectly, just as one would hope,” says Colatch. “One of the dining services employees talked about her cousin, a priest who is involved in worldwide humanitarian aid, and how the food that had been air-dropped to starving people in Africa was confiscated by the government and allowed to rot. I think it made a great impact on those who heard the story. Hopefully, students are a little more aware of how food does and does not get distributed throughout the world.”
The two attending ASB teams gave a brief presentation about national and global hunger and also discussed what they will be doing next spring to help with these issues.
Parker believes the banquet, which the Landis Center hosts almost every year as part of Hunger and Homelessness week, was a success.
“Participants left the banquet enlightened, motivated, and hungry – which is exactly the point,” he says.