"Nine hundred people will go to bed hungry...40 to 60 million will die...a child dies every three seconds." Colby College sociology professor John White started snapping his fingers as he spoke, "One, two, three."
White was the keynote speaker at the annual Oxfam Hunger Banquet in Daggett Lounge on Tuesday night. The banquet, which addressed the problem of world hunger internationally, was organized by the student-run group Global Justice. The hunger banquet raised money for Oxfam, an organization that distributes food worldwide.
The banquet itself is run as a simulation of global inequalities. Some students who attended sat at tables with soft tablecloths and were treated to a full meal of chicken, vegetables, pasta, and lemonade. The majority of the students, however, sat on the floor and ate rice and beans.
"This is a set-up of world situations," Global Justice member Amanda Escobar '07 said. "The floor represents the poor, the chairs are for the middle class, and the table is for the rich."
Throughout the first part of the program, simulations and statistics were presented to the 30 students that attended the banquet.
"[This is] a program we get from Oxfam...it tells you what kind of food to serve, how the room should be set up," Sarah Close '06 said. Hundreds of identical banquets are held throughout the year, following the instructions provided by Oxfam International.
While this year's turnout was slightly smaller than in the past, the members of Global Justice were satisfied with the event as a whole.
"It's a really busy time of year, so it's hard to get a big crowd to these kinds of things," Kate Loomis '06 said. Despite the modest turnout, those who attended seemed convinced of the importance of the banquet and the issues it dealt with.
"We are in a unique position of privilege," Loomis said. "It's our responsibility."
White has spoken twice at Bowdoin in the past and was a Bowdoin professor from 2002-2003. In his address, White spoke passionately about the subject of world hunger.
First White recognized the students willing to take the time out of their day to attend the banquet.
"Thank you for not walking on by. This is the greatest moral crisis in the world right now."
White compared world hunger to other historical horrors like the Holocaust.
"Everyone wondered why the world stood by?this issue is almost more obscene, more perverse than the Holocaust," he said.
To emphasize the actual impact of world hunger, White made an effort to make the students see the people behind the numbers.
"Imagine a brother, a father, a sister, a friend, going away forever. Now imagine another, and another, and another. Now imagine a million, now imagine a billion?that's as if the bomb that took off and hit Hiroshima goes off twice a week, exploding silently," he said.
Once White established the importance of addressing world hunger, he spoke about taking action.
"If we were to take all the food produced and split it equally between everyone, everyone would be obese. In fact, one quarter of the population would die of obesity," he said.
"The 400 billionaires in the world have more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of the world. Six percent of the population, probably including all of us in this room, consumes 60 percent of the earth's resources and are responsible of 40 percent of its waste."
White also shared a personal experience of fasting for 22 days and losing a third of his body weight.
"Hunger hurts," he said. "I still don't know what its like to be hungry like the people on the floor here."
Many students were moved by White's words.
"I think I agree with our speaker...about this being the biggest moral crises," Mike Taylor '07 said.
Junior Sonia Alam concurred.
"I think he was really motivating, you need to present these statistics," she said.
After the speech, White told the Orient how hunger can be stopped in the United States.
"We need to re-establish welfare?it's been slashed?until 1980 we largely eliminated hunger...we stopped caring," he said.