Tuesday, February 18, 2014 | @ecfiNewe

 

IIT Hunger Banquet back for seconds

Utsav Gandhi 8c
Kendall Granberry
CAMPUS EDITOR & TECHNEWS WRITER

Hunger is more than just famine
and is more than just a lack of access to food
and nutrition.

This is the underlying principle
behind Oxfam International’s Hunger
Banquet, an event that seeks to communicate
to participants the multiple ways that hunger
affects the daily experiences of the world’s
underprivileged.

Many of us in the United States
tend to see hunger as a being the result of
failures on the part of the individual, but one
of the objectives of this event is to expose us
to the ways in which hunger results from—
and perpetuates—systemic oppression and
violence on both national and global scales.
Hunger is about power; the world’s equality
graph is quite badly skewed, and hunger falls
somewhere along the line as a consequence
of human rights, opportunities being not

 

Khaleela Zaman
STAFF WRITER

It seems like everyone is always asking
if you have been to the Skydeck at the Willis
Tower. Has anyone checked out the Hancock
Observatory? It is almost like a hidden gem
in the city. At the Hancock, students receive a
discounted price of $10 (just tell them you are
a student) to go up to the top, while Skydeck
admission costs $19! The Skydeck boasts its
glass floor balconies high above the city, but the
Hancock actually has a portion of open air space
at their Observatory level, called the Skywalk.
From 1,000 feet above the Magnificent Mile, you
can stand with the wind flowing through your
hair as you gaze across the city. Additionally, the
Skydeck does not offer a sweeping view of the
expanse of Chicago at night like the Hancock.

Open every night until 11 p.rn., the
360-degree night views from the Observatory
are spectacular. All the light pollution present in
the city illuminates the entire area of Chicago in
an endless grid of orange-yellow glow. Many of
the famous Chicago landmarks are visible from
the 94th floor of the Hancock, including Willis
Tower, Trump Tower, and Navy Pier’s Ferris
wheel.

One of the coolest things about
visiting the Observatory at night is the ability
to watch the lights as they move through the
city organism against the black night backdrop.
The red lights of vehicles heading north on
Lakeshore Drive appeared like red blood cells
whilst the white lights of vehicles driving
south on Lakeshore Drive looked like white
blood cells; Lakeshore Drive like an artery led
into the heart of the city and the streets off of

accorded in the right proportion, and very
little corrective action being carried out about
this scenario. Companies and governments
control more of the food patterns in today’s
world than the farmers who grow it or the
consumers who eat it. Resource constraints,
growing families, gender stereotypes, erratic
weather patterns and ethnic conflicts are
driving food prices up while record numbers
of people go hungry.

Last year’s inaugural IIT-hosted
event will probably go down as one of the
most socially engaging ones we have had the
privilege to attend at IIT, thanks in no small
part to the work of its organizers.

It was a truly interactive experience
that forced us to question what it means
to be “underprivileged” and how that
conception can and does change according
to different economic, environmental, and
social contexts. Its power lays in the fact that
it demonstrably showed, through narratives
and symbols, the ways in which context
ultimately determines one’s choices and one’s

Lakeshore like capillaries running through
the organization of buildings, or organs, of
Downtown Chicago all alter your perception
of the city in amazing ways.

To be honest, there is one annoying

access to resources, not simply one’s “drive”
or “sense of self.’ ’

The event served as a kind of
catalyst to promote becoming more interested
and involved in community mobilization and
organizing. Many people at this school often
wonder how they can get involved in activism
and social causes and this event does this
by bringing together people from different
backgrounds, many of whom currently
work on issues like hunger specifically in the
geopolitical context of Chicago. In this way, it
is a great opportunity to meet and engage not
only fellow students on these issues, but also
active community leaders, serving as a way
to galvanize student interests that will direct
their social and intellectual pursuits long after
their time at IIT. Socially conscious student
organizations like Engineers without Borders
and Alternative Spring Break are expected to
have a large presence at the event.

This year, IIT will once again host
a Hunger Banquet on February 26, from 5 to
7 pm, as part of Social Justice Month, co-

aspect about the Observatory at night—the
reflection of all the inside lights and human
activity in the windows while you are trying to
capture a photograph of the outer city. After a
while, though, I found this to be eye-opening;

hosted by Engineers without Borders and the
Office of Service Learning. As the politics of
social justice deal primarily with examining
systems of inequality and access to material
resources, this event is perfect for anyone
interested in observing inequality through
the lens of food insecurity. This year’s will
be an equally informative and eye—opening
experience that raises awareness not only of
hunger, but of illiteracy, poverty, disease, war
and the complex connections that crucially
and inevitably link these societal ills.

The event is free for all IIT students,
staff and faculty; and you can RSVP at tiny.cc/
hbiit14. Without giving too much away, at this
interactive event, the place where you sit and
the meal that you eat are determined by the
luck of the draw—just as in real life some of
us are born into relative prosperity and others
into poverty. A lively discussion will follow
the meal and students will hopefully leave
with a better understanding of the world’s
skewed equality ratio and a renewed drive to
help tackle it.

Photo by Khuleelu Zumun

 

zé: ‘

I realized how the people within the confines of
the 94th floor of the Hancock are just as much a
part of the city fabric as what can be seen outside
the window. So next time you have a free night,
consider visiting the Hancock Observatory.