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Rice Students Get a Taste of Poverty

September 15, 2009 RSS Feed Print

Some students at Rice University increased their awareness of poverty by experiencing it for a few days, the Rice Thresher reports.

About 75 students lived outdoors in makeshift shanties set up on the university's quad for four days and got a budget of $2 a day, the same amount of money that 2 billion people across the world live on. Students constructed the shanties from two-by-fours, plywood, and cardboard boxes donated from local hardware and lumber stores, and they ate three square meals of rice and beans prepared, served, and cleaned up by their fellow shantytown members. Check out these photos of the poverty awareness event.

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I'm with Donna. This "experiment" is so off the mark. Rice parents should be feeling pretty duped for the high tuition dollars paid for such questionable educational experience. The very fact that students carried out this charade without questioning it's validity says so much of the gulf between the haves and the have-nots. If Rice enrolled more students from disadvantage backgrounds, they would have laughed so hard this "poverty experience" would never been carried out. The slideshow was incredulous because it is simply so removed from what real poverty is like.
Rice, please learn from the long tradition at Columbia University in NYC and get out in your local communities and do some good while you are trying to educate yourself. Don't build a bubble on your quad...those unfortunates around your campus are in truth your equals, just not so blessed. Don't fear them, get to know them if you really want to understand what it is like to be poor.

Sandra Nelson of TX 10:51AM September 19, 2009

The students were raising awareness on a issue that occurs around the world. They were not trying to end poverty. I think it was great what they did. A lot of people are criticizing, but these students have probably done more than you have. Many of the students participating in this event have been to other parts of the world and helped out. They've done alternative spring break, going to parts around the country, Mexico, Costa Rica, and helped out there. Some have been part of Engineers Without Borders (http://www.ewb.rice.edu/) and has "four international engineering projects in three countries, and a budget of approximately $40,000". That's only a glimpse of what Rice does. So unless you are out there saving the world, you shouldn't be putting these students down.

RiceOwl of TX 1:43PM September 16, 2009

As a Rice student, I'd like to defend this effort by saying that in no way did the participants, or any of the other students, believe that they were "experiencing poverty," and none claimed to suddenly know the hardships suffered by those who actually live under those conditions. Rather, setting up shanties on campus was a more direct way of raising awareness of the issue on a basic level to students on campus. Hopefully this will inspire some students to do more work with poverty and, as you said, actually visit foreign countries to help out.

Jay of TX 1:13PM September 16, 2009

Rice Students Get a Taste of Poverty

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