Last week, my classmates and I attended the Oxfam American Hunger Banquet that was held at Wagner College. When my class walked into the teachers’ dining hall, we were all assigned to different seats. Some students were assigned to a table that had salads, pitchers of soda, and glass plates. Other students were told to sit in the corner on the floor, while a few other students such as myself were assigned to sit at a table that had nothing on it. I began to become curious as to what was going on. When the banquet began, I found out that my table represented the middle class in society, and the students who were sitting on the floor represented the lower class in society. A couple of minutes later, it was revealed that the students who were sitting at the table that had many items represented the upper class in society. That night, I learned that people in the lower class have a genuine struggle to acquire food. Many of these people do not even know when their next meal is going to be. In fact, many people in the lower class have an entire family to feed. Not having money or a plentiful amount of food resources makes it a constant struggle for these people to feed their families and themselves on a consistent basis. Throughout the banquet, some students either moved up or down the social class ladder. I learned that these changes in social class can happen at any moment in a person’s life. Just because people have wealth the majority of their lives does not mean that they will be rich for the remainder of their lives. That night, I learned that peoples’ lives can ultimately change in a matter of a day. People may be rich one day, but the next day, they could lose all of their money. As a result, these people will now struggle to feed themselves and their families. At the end of the banquet’s presentation, the students who still represented the middle class ate plain pasta and drank water from a plastic cup. The students who remained in the lower class had to eat rice and beans out of a plastic cup. The students who remained in the upper class at the end of the banquet had a feast; they ate chicken, pasta with sauce, salad, and they drank soda and water out of glass cups. The Oxfam American Hunger Banquet was truly a wonderful experience for me. I went home informed about how much people in the lower class struggle to provide food for themselves and their families, and I also went home in awe that a person could be rich or poor one day, but the next day their life can either change for better or worse.
This was the card given to me when I arrived to the banquet.
on that card was a name of someone who survived off of middle income with a short snippet of their lives. I got a woman from Somalia who was named Halima. Halima was a mother of five and worked as a nurse. It was interesting to see what others around me got on their cards. Since I was middle class, I got to sit at a table with others in my social class which I was happy about because I was fortunate enough to actually get a seat. However, my friends who all got “Low Income” on their cards succumbed to sitting on the floor. The very few people who got “High Income” on their cards sat at a table that had a fancier set up and had salads and water waiting for them as they sat.
