Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2005/11/22/sleep_out_4_awareness.php
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
The Tucker Foundation, finding themselves lacking sufficient rain-gear and on the brink of irony, decided to launch a "Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week" whose noble ambition found its grievous climax in a sleep-out (well, not really "out", but we'll get to that) Wednesday night at the Collis Commonground porch. In an effort to have students feel—or more properly, imagine what it actually feels like to sleep beneath the city lights and rain at night, Tucker organized a sleep-out for sympathetic Dartmouth students—many of who presumably frequent otherawareness-raising-groups like "Dartmouth Ends Hunger," or the "Darfur Action Group." But, prior to the "calm before the storm," and by that I mean, a handful of earnest activists who have, on occasion wondered how the other half lives, we have the storm. That's right, falling rain the likes of which the homeless themselves suffer on an intermittent basis. Solution? Turn the sleep-out of doors to the sleep-in doors.
This may have presented a categorical problem for those less sentimental, but it's the thought that counts. As for those un-washed bag people in New York, Baltimore, The Hamptons? Well, let's not get all philosophical about something that has always had more to do with the subject than the object. While I partook of my hot chocolate and free donuts from Lou's in the company of my more earnest advocates of "Hunger and Homeless Awareness Week," it occurred to me that hot chocolate, donuts and a warm dry place to sleep are not likely to be part of the imagined experience an earnest Dartmouth student had likely romanticized. I was sad to think that this experience had probably not lived up to the dream of homelessness—this, of course, is about the sympathizer not the sympathizee. I left feeling sad for my fellow Dartmouth students as I headed home knowing how disappointed many would be with their venture into homelessness.