A bunch of rich white kids are going to pretend they know what it’s like to be homeless.
University students across Canada are trying to live for five days without money, food or shelter, in a campaign to raise awareness about homelessness.
During the five days, participating students must follow several rules:
Remain on their school campus until Friday at 5 p.m.;
Have no disposable income;
Only eat food they receive from donations;
Have a blanket and pillow, which can be exchanged for an emergency meal;
Sleep outside, unless temperatures put their health at risk;
Do not use their student access card for showers; and,
Attend all of their regular classes and follow all academic responsibilities.
So they will be “roughing it” on secure university campuses, where there is no danger of having their shoes stolen while they sleep. Uh huh. They also don’t have to be among the genuine homeless, many of whom are mentally ill or high on meth and possibly dangerous. Certainly they’d be dangerous to a bunch of rich kids who go slumming.
Should it get too cold, they can go inside. But they don’t have to go to a real homeless shelter, where they would risk contracting TB.
They will have food “donated”, probably by their own school pals who think this is quite a lark. Real homeless people have few – if any – friends.
A pillow? Wow.
Attend classes – where it’s warm and dry.
Is it just me, or does this sound like a page out of a book on Method Acting? Seriously. If any of these kids ever missed a meal in their lives for something other than hockey practice, I’d be shocked.
Heck, I consider myself pretty lucky that I lived in my car for a few weeks – at least I had a car to live in. But I certainly wouldn’t be so damn patronizing as to run out and pretend to be poorer than I am. It’s a bloody insult to those that won’t be able to take a warm shower and have a hot meal at 5:01 Friday afternoon.
And really… who are they kidding? By 5:02 this will be nothing but a clever little story about their college days that they can tell at the law firm dinner parties in the not-too-distant future.
More well intentioned silliness. If they truly wished to do some good they would work to amend laws that make it very difficult for medical and law enforcement authorities to properly supervise the mentally ill, who make up the bulk of our homeless population.
Why do strains of the Tubes “White Punks on Dope” fill my subconscious when reading about suburban students mimicry of class struggle revolutionaries?
There’s a lot of money in the homeless industry, it’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars in Canada – actually it’s worth hundreds of millions in Toronto alone. These pricks are simply building credentials in order to be able to cash in on that gravy train.
Brilliant assesment. Pithy as always.
These are the type of people that end-up employed by the CHRC.
I remember doing one of those when I was in university. Me and some buddies brought beer and thought it would be a good way to meet girls. Didn’t work out so well. Everyone there was very sanctimonious and thought we were totally out of line for not fasting and thinking of the homeless, so forth. We called it quits around 4AM, freezing. Next night, everyone, (including the sanctimonious) was in the campus pub whooping it up on a Thursday night (Thursday was the big night back then). So much for the homeless.
“These are the type of people that end-up employed by the CHRC.
Comment by clutch my pearls”
I first read that as “employed by the CBC”. Same thing.