Tonight LC 13 and I attended the Oxfam Hunger Banquet in the Wagner College Faculty Dining Hall. Walking in, I had no idea what kind of “banquet” this was going to be. I understood it was to raise awareness for world hunger but that was about it and I could not understand how world hunger and a banquet where we were going to be fed was going to be intertwined. To my surprise, as I walked in I was given a green piece of paper and was directed to sit at a table that was set with wine glasses, silverware, dishes and bread and butter (As shown in the photo below). To me, it was like a place setting at a fancy restaurant. I was very confused. The confusion grew when I looked around and saw some students directed to sit on the floor and others at a regular, standard table with a white cloth.

During the lecture discussing the multitude of poverty and hunger within the world, I was shocked at the statistics of how many people live with chronic hunger and malnourishment. I was particularly shocked that every 11 and a half seconds a child dies because of malnourishment. I really began to be grateful for the middle-upper class family I was born into. The speakers used my classmates as examples to show the social mobility that is possible and I also realized that no one from the upper class, where I was sitting, was asked to step down to a lower class table.

I was intrigued at how each person had no control over where they sat at the banquet, it was completely random. This shows the way people are born into a social class and how there’s no control over what their social status will be. This lecture really opened my eyes to no matter how hard people even worked, like the factory workers or the pickers in the field, one day could change your whole life and social status just by one unexpected event like a natural disaster in the case of the plantations.

In the same way, the people of the lower class in poverty had almost no choice in the employment and education opportunities in their lives. The lower class had to take whatever job was given to them. In the case of Pablo, who stood up against the maltreatment, he was fired. This made me realized how difficult it is for anyone in the lower class to move up or make any change in their lives because of how limited they are. The speakers emphasized almost no children exceed 8th grade and barely any girls are even sent to school. This leaves even less opportunity to prosper. The Oxfam Hunger Banquet truly opened my eyes to the distinct social class differences and the extreme poverty still evident in the world today, whether we see it in our own neighborhoods or not.