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    In the cold

November 21, 2008

GAC students feel homeless reality

Homeless exercise misunderstood by some

By Dan Linehan

ST PETER — As temperatures plunged to 12 degrees, Lauren Fulner spent Monday night in a cardboard box in an attempt to get a taste of what it’s like to be homeless.

For her trouble, she was mocked by classmates who told her the sleepout was a futile exercise. You can’t possibly understand what it’s like to be homeless, they told her, and it’s insulting to pretend otherwise.

But the dozen or so Gustavus Adolphus College students who slept outside — and the 25 others who slept on a floor inside Christ Chapel — for three nights this week aren’t pretending to be homeless. They admit they don’t know what it’s like, nor is it solely a guilt-assuaging exercise for students attending a school where the tuition, room and board for a year costs $36,366.

Even if the students’ experience of homelessness isn’t at all authentic, they do learn real things during their experiences, held now to commemorate National Hunger and Homelessness Week.

They have to decide whether or not to trust strangers enough to leave their stuff outside, or take it with them.

Fulner, a Gustavus senior who slept in a large cardboard box that once held a reclining chair, said she decided to store her expensive jacket and sleeping bag indoors.

They also gather at the cafeteria to scrounge half-eaten food from trays. That’s because, while there are no rules about how far to take the experience, some participants decide not to buy their own food this week and have to depend on the kindness of strangers.

And yes, they get some looks as they descend on the trays.

“It’s never malice, just confusion and disgust,” junior Haven Davis said of the people who walk by.

They’ve learned the difficulty of finding hot food, vegetables and dairy products, which spoil quickly. They’re not too picky for half-eaten food, but they’ll try to avoid the bite marks.

Davis does it with friends, avoiding the social isolation that would come from breaking food taboos alone.

“There’s no way I would do this by myself,” she said.

Associate professor Richard Leitch “invited” his seminar class, called The Politics of Homelessness, to participate.

“When I tell them, ‘no cell phones,’ they’re shocked,” he said. “Now, it’s becoming no laptops.”

Students learn about many socially awkward or uncomfortable experiences that are well known to homeless people.

“All these things that’re really humbling,” Leitch says, “we don’t think about the dignity of other human beings sometimes.”

And as for the jeering students who mocked the sleepout, senior Breanna Draxler has another interpretation of the week.

“It’s a form of protest, a demonstration,” she said.

The students know that they can’t know what it’s like to be homeless; nor will their sleepout by itself have any effect on homelessness.

But it helps them know a little bit more about what it’s like to be homeless — empathy isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. And Draxler interprets it as a protest of poverty in a wealthy society.

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