Charles Carter of Providence
Ministries (right) provides information about Kate's Kitchen for MHC
students who later participated in the MassPIRG Sleep Out November
21.
As extremely fortunate and privileged
students at Mount Holyoke, it is hard for most of us to imagine what
it would be like to be homeless or not to have enough food. We never
have to think about where we are going to sleep or where our next
meal will come from. I have found that it is easy to take this
security for granted, rarely considering how lucky I am to have more
than enough.
I feel that it is important to make
people aware of how lucky they are and to encourage them to help
those less fortunate than themselves. On November 21, as a
participant in the MassPIRG Sleep Out, I tried to imagine what it
would be like not to have a place to sleep. I was prepared to sleep
out on the Green, but had to sleep inside due to safety concerns.
At first I was extremely disappointed
about moving inside, although I understood the necessity for the
change. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the
ability to move inside was meaningful. It was unsafe for us to sleep
outside, so instead we spent the night on the floor of Prospect
living room. But what about those people who sleep outside despite
the fact that it is unsafe to do so? They have no other option.
This is the third consecutive year
that MassPIRG has organized a Sleep Out on the Green to raise money
for shelters and soup kitchens in this area. The Sleep Out serves
primarily as a fundraiser, but it also increases awareness on campus
about homelessness. Nothing will make you appreciate the value of a
warm bed as much as sleeping outside at the end of November!
This year, six students participated
in the event (more than twenty-five students slept out last year),
five of whom had slept out in previous years. "I have yet to make it
through the night at the Sleep Out," says Genevieve Neumuth '01.
"It's just too cold. Although I feel bad about abandoning the cause,
I'm really glad that I have the option of taking a hot shower and
climbing into my bed!"
This is the sort of realization that I
hope students will gain from the Sleep Out--an appreciation of how
trying it must be to be homeless. We spend one night outside with
top-of-the-line sleeping bags, and many of us are still miserable in
the morning. "From sleeping out I can understand why the homeless can
rarely do more than try to survive," says Emily Monteer '00. "They
hardly sleep; they are hungry and often unsafe. No one can function
to their full potential under those circumstances."
The money raised at this year's Sleep
Out will be donated to Kate's Kitchen in Holyoke. In previous years
MassPIRG has donated the money to shelters in both Holyoke and
Northampton.
photo by Fred LeBlanc
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