The event, held Tuesday evening in the Union Street Center Auditorium, was an interactive simulation of the injustices of the global food system, Oxfam IU board member sophomore Aamina Khan said.
“People think that hunger is a problem of too many people and too little food, but that’s not true,” Khan said. “There’s enough food on the planet for everyone to have enough and then some, but it’s not distributed equally.”
Guests entered the Hunger Banquet and selected at random a card that divided them into high, middle or lower class and gave them information on the person they would portray for the evening.
An example of a low-income card was Lai, a struggling Cambodian farmer-fisherman who is scared of the government damming the river to which his livelihood is tied.
The small handful of high-income guests were led to sit at decorated round tables. The middle-income guests were directed to sit at chairs without tables. The vast majority of the guests were low-income and sat on the floor.
After guests were seated, an interactive social mobility presentation began in which the hosts announced events like famines or a bountiful harvest, which moved some guests down or up a social class.
Next on the agenda was dinner, with the menu determined by social standing. High-income guests were waited on by Oxfam members and served a full meal from Anatolia.
Middle-income guests helped themselves to bowls of rice and beans , while low-income guests served themselves from a few trays of plain white rice sitting on the floor.
The dinner brought out mixed emotions in the guests portraying the different social classes.
Lily Walls , who played an upper-class Indian doctor, Ranjani, said the differences between the social classes were really apparent from her vantage point sitting at a table.
“While it’s satisfying sitting here eating, it’s also sad sitting here eating,” she said.
Guests on the floor said they too felt the acute class differences.
Maddie Kesler, who played a coffee bean harvester from El Salvador, said her position on the floor eating bland rice while others feasted on a three-course meal was likely a good example of what it is like to be low-income.
“I’m definitely upset about it, because I was hoping to get food,” she said.
Bringing out emotions in guests is the purpose of the event, according to Khan.
“We want people to be able to internalize the issue of world hunger,” she said.
Following the dinner was a group discussion about issues the guests may not have yet realized, like why the high-income people didn’t attempt to share all their leftover food with the lower classes.
“We never told them they couldn’t, but that’s just how they assume it is,” Khan said.
Khan said she hopes guests left the event with a sense of responsibility to address food inequality issues, especially in their own communities.
“I think it should be everyone’s goal to make sure resources are distributed more evenly,” she said.
