The final punctuation of Hunger Week at Dartmouth was a comma rather than an exclamation mark. A panel discussion in 105 Dartmouth Hall on the afternoon of Nov. 19 drew an audience of no more than 25, a fraction of which were Dartmouth students. The event was scheduled as a culmination to a week of events organized by Students Fighting Hunger. President Freedman sent a letter supporting the events and urging attendance by the Dartmouth community. Nevertheless, for the entire week, a handful of undergraduates were the sole representation for Dartmouth's 4,000+ student body.
The rows and rows of empty seats before the panel members, who one by one discussed the plight of the hungry in our own backyard, were reminiscent of memories of South Africa. Apartheid and its cruelties thrived not because many people didn't care, but because those who did not suffer preferred not to hear about or look at the lives of its victims. How many apartment dwellers in a building in Johannesburg opened their doors to "flat boys," who every day, on their knees, brushed and polished their floors? All of them. How many apartment dwellers walked up one flight of stairs to the roof top where these same Zulu men ate and slept in concrete cubicles? None of them.
At Dartmouth and the Upper Valley today, we have an economic apartheid much like the racial apartheid in South Africa. Geography and social structure conspire to place rich and poor in a different place, a different world, our of sight and out of reach of each other. Problems of hunger and poverty remain out of our minds and concerns as we carry on with our own agenda, swept up by our own escalated wants, failing to come to grips with the urgent need just one arm's length away.
As the panel on hunger spoke, 105 Dartmouth Hall looked like the microcosm of the problem we don't discuss. What does it take to jolt us from this complacency?
In Vermont's poorest counties, one out of every four children depends on food stamps. Sixty five to 70 percent of the food recipients are children, often from single parent families. Sixty three percent of households served by Vermont food banks are from families with children. The highest proportions, 89 percent, were reported by food shelves in Windsor County, just across the Connecticut River from Dartmouth. Food shelves at the local Haven shelter in White River Junction had 368 recipients per year 11 years ago. Now the shelter has 5,000 food recipients per year and the number has increased by 1000 per year since 1991. Local donations to food banks cannot keep up - in fact, local donations have decreased.
Mike Popowitz '94, organizer for Students Fighting Hunger, comes to pick up the groceries left by one college department. "Five full boxes... that makes up for most of the other departments where we didn't get much," he exclaims as he carries the goods to his car. "Yea, some departments had a couple cans, that's it." True, donations and personal involvement are not solutions, but they do reflect the concern necessary to find some.
Do we need to wait, like South Africa, until the human toll of suffering rings so loud that we have no choice? Do we need to hear one cynical panel member's appeal, "Poverty is bad for business," to urge us into action? Do we, who do not suffer, need to stumble over panhandlers or get mugged or shot before we open our eyes to the urgent need we keep hidden from our vision? If we can't get people interested and involved at Dartmouth, how are we going to be able to do it in the society at large? What will it take to get an enthusiastic Dartmouth student and community participation for Hunger Week in 1994?
