Last week, my classmates and I attended the Oxfam American Hunger Banquet that was held at\u00a0Wagner College.\u00a0When 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,\u00a0pitchers of soda, and\u00a0glass plates. Other students\u00a0were told to sit\u00a0in the corner on the floor, while\u00a0a few other students such as myself were assigned to sit at a table that had nothing on it. I began to become\u00a0curious 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.\u00a0A couple of minutes\u00a0later, it was revealed\u00a0that the students who were sitting at the table\u00a0that had many items represented the upper class in society.\u00a0That night, I learned that\u00a0people in the lower class have a genuine struggle to\u00a0acquire\u00a0food. Many of these people do not even know when their next meal is going to be.\u00a0In fact,\u00a0many people in the lower class have\u00a0an entire family to feed. Not having\u00a0money or a plentiful amount of food resources makes\u00a0it a constant struggle for these people to feed their families and themselves on a consistent basis.\u00a0Throughout 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\u00a0people 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\u00a0in a matter of a day.\u00a0People may be rich one day, but the next day, they\u00a0could 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\u00a0ate 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\u00a0cup. The students who remained in the upper class at the end of the banquet\u00a0had 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.<\/p>\n
![\"untitled\"](\"http:\/\/faculty.wagner.edu\/citizen-appetites\/files\/2015\/12\/untitled.png\")
<\/a>This was the card given to me when I arrived to the banquet.<\/p><\/div>\n
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Last week, my classmates and I attended the Oxfam American Hunger Banquet that was held at\u00a0Wagner College.\u00a0When my class walked into the teachers’ dining hall, we were all assigned to different seats. Some students were assigned to a table that … Continue reading