 "Photo: Jose Arredondo")
Uncomfortable, hungry and tired was how participants of W: Women in Power's 36-hour poverty simulation felt.
The past two years, W has put on poverty demonstrations in Rudder Plaza by living there for three days, only eating food given to them and not changing clothes or showering. This year was the first time the simulation was open to non-organization members. It began Tuesday at 6 p.m. and ended today.
Haley Wren, the executive of membership development and a sophomore special education major, said many times students would stop and express an interest in participating in a similar demonstration, so W expanded to a campus-wide program.
The simulation is designed to give participants a taste of what living below the poverty line in a homeless-state is like and familiarize them with the frustrations, struggles and hardships homeless individuals face on a daily basis.
"People were given a scenario standard to what the Twin City Mission faces on a regular basis and were asked to 'live' out that scenario throughout the course of the demonstration," Wren said.
Students were asked to not purchase any foodstuffs or luxuries during the simulation and were to spend as much of their free time as possible with the SIMS shelter.
"We wanted people to get out of their comfort zones and realize how hard life can be when you are tired, hungry and uncomfortable all the time," Wren said.
The first night left most occupants of SIMS with similar feelings: pain, frustration and hatred toward the cold. Participants were woken up at 7 a.m. to begin their day of homelessness; the temperature at the time was in the low 50s and no one claimed to have had a good night's rest.
"Last night was terrible, I slept terrible; it was cold, my hips hurt and my head hurts and I woke up early," said Karen Johnson, a freshman petroleum engineering major.
Much to the dismay of several participants, the cold temperature, hard ground and overall wetness were not the only hindrances to a productive rest.
"I am going to kick that train conductor," said Eric Nystrom, a freshman psychology major, "because he was ringing his horn too many times."
Another disturbance to the sleeping participants was when a homeless individual tried to get into the shelter with drugs and alcohol in her system. The policy of SIMS clearly states this is not acceptable so she was denied admittance to the shelter, but not before waking several participants.
"They had a simulation at 2 a.m. where they had someone riled up," said Jeremiah Johnson, a freshman aerospace engineering major. "I do not know exactly what happened because I was woken up by them and I was not fully aware of anything but there were whistles and flashlights and I heard a lady yelling that she was cold and that she was going to go sleep under a bridge, but it woke me up so I did not get a very good night's sleep."
Participants signed up for the simulation as families and as families they were to go through the events together. One family stood out from the crowd very distinctly: it was a family of all Hearne ISD schoolteachers.
"This is something we need to delve into well because if we live this life and figure out what it is like to do this then we understand that this is the kind of family of the students we teach," said Becky Slovak, class of '81.
Slovak was one of four Aggies in their family, and teaches English at Hearne High School. The other Aggies from the Hearne ISD family were Judy LeUnes, Class of 1976; Jackie Kowalski, who completed her graduate studies in education at Texas A&M in 1993; and Tyra Watts, Class of 2008. The fifth member of their family was Steve Traynor.
"Our plan is to take this simulation back and create a training for the teachers because we work in high poverty areas," LeUnes said.
Watts said she had a much different perspective on the event than she would have last year, although only one year removed from college.
"I feel like I look at it completely different, if I had been out here with all the other college kids it would have been like a camp out for Texas tickets, so I am definitely looking at it a lot different," Watts said. "Being a teacher it makes you look at the whole poverty issue completely differently than when you are in college and you are in your little bubble and everything is great."
Both parents losing their jobs plagued the Hearne family and one being a drug addict made matters even worse. Small rations for this family of five left the Hearnes desperate for food, so they set out looking for help from the A&M community.
The Hearnes decided to try their luck asking for food or money from students in the education department. This proved to be a very successful venture which they repeated five times throughout the afternoon, raising nearly $150 to be donated to fighting poverty; they were also given food items so they did not need to spend any of that money on themselves.
"Not only was it awesome to see the Hearne teachers [raise such a large sum of donations], but it made me very proud of the Aggie community here," said Amanda Snyder, executive director of W and a senior anthropology major. "I feel like only here in Aggieland would you find students willing to donate their pocket change or even their lunch money to people asking and in need."
The Hearnes also found work cleaning gum off trashcans around campus. Other families found temporary jobs in other capacities, one of which was gardening.
"It was not a very hard job, but just under the conditions of us feeling really tired and without much nutrients, it made even pulling weeds seem like really tiring and a 20 minute job seem like an hour," said Renee Rybicki, a junior psychology major.
Amelia Mayer, a Blinn freshman psychology major, said that this simulation raised her awareness of homeless women in similar situations as her scenario.
"Now I really feel bad for pregnant women," Mayer said. "Long story short, we needed medication and did not get it; now the baby might be in danger."
Similarly, Carly Bogan, a sophomore general studies major, said her experience raised her awareness for poverty overall, but especially for those in the scenario she experienced.
"Being cold all night and sleeping on the ground was really eye-opening to what homeless people go through, not to mention the process of trying to get federal aid and medicine," Bogan said. "It makes me realize how much I take everything I have for granted and how many little daily worries are nothing compared to the huge problems that the homeless community faces."
The Hearne family plans to put on the same simulation next year that faculty must attend in an effort to understand the students they teach and better their relationships with them through their common experiences.
"Yesterday, I had an experience with a parent that really clearly demonstrated to me that I think like a middle-class person," said Kowalski, the Hearne ISD superintendent. "Not that I am going to change how I think, but I can be more empathetic and I can try to put myself in their shoes to solve the problems together so it is not just a conflict between the two of us: we really are working together to solve whatever problem arises."
W felt like the event was a huge success and plans to have another poverty simulation next year, but this simulation will be on a much larger scale.
"It has been a huge success, we define success as one person being impacted and we have had many more than [one person] impacted from this and we raised great awareness for Twin City Mission and what they are trying to do over there," Snyder said. "It is definitely going to become an annual thing."
Not only will the poverty simulation become an annual event at A&M, Snyder said that it will be expanding next year.
"Because we had the Hearne teachers up here experiencing poverty, we feel we are actually going to try and expand it to other school districts and offer it to teachers. It will still be on campus."
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