Homeless Students? What About Homeless Professors?

(A note from "Dr. Toffee":  Keep in mind that Rhonda is a fictional character.  The conversation she overheard and describes in this posting is a composite of stories I have heard from faculty at several different schools, and, as far as I know, this has never happened at the school where I currently teach.  However, given the way things are all over the academic world, this could happen at almost any college or university that employs adjuncts. 
And, as everybody who has ever held office hours in a shared space knows, there is no privacy for personal conversations, but people keep having them, even when students are in the room.)

I've gotten behind again.  Last week I read an article by Eleanor Bader, "Homeless on Campus," about how colleges and universities don't have enough services to help homeless students.  She spoke to a professor who had allowed students to sleep in her office so they didn't have to drop out.  This was an eye opener for me, but it paled next to a conversation I overheard last month.

I went to my math instructor's office hours to get help with my homework, and I was surprised to find that he doesn't actually have an office.  He's in a "faculty workroom" during his office hours, and there were a couple of other teachers in there at the same time.  I asked him why he didn't have an office, and he told me that he was an adjunct.  I had never heard this word before, and it must have shown on my face, because he explained that he is part-time, only teaching 3 courses a semester (I later found out that that's full time for professors at a lot of schools that expect the professors to write stuff as well as teach).  While we were talking about my stuff, another teacher came in and started talking to a teacher who was working on a computer, and that's where it got interesting.  I was working through the homework assignment, but eventually I just kept my head down and listened.  It seems that another teacher had just been in an accident near campus, which is bad enough, but it turns out that it was a disaster, because he has been living in his car!    
I guess I made a noise or something, because everyone in the room turned and looked at me.  My teacher looked at the talkers and said, "ahem," so they moved over to the other side of the (small) room and tried to keep their voices down.  The first teacher said she hadn't known that he was homeless, and the one who was telling about the accident said that he lost his apartment over the summer because his car broke down and after he got it fixed there was no money for the rent.  He had been showering at the fitness center on campus and so on to keep going. 
I really don't understand how this could happen.  I didn't want to ask my teacher, but I still wonder about it. 

Related articles

• Homeless Invited to Speak in Lecture (thecrimson.com)
• UK News: Homeless 'die 30 years younger' (walesonline.co.uk)

Hunger

The Hunger Games (film)
 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I don't really want to talk about the essay I read for this week because I'm still thinking about the one I read last week.  This is because my sister Rebecca bought the DVD of The Hunger Games, and I finally managed to find the time to watch it.  I read the book a while back, and I was surprised at how little hunger was shown in the film.  It was almost as if they didn't want people to be thinking about an America where people are starving to death.  In the book, hunger is everywhere, even when they go to the capitol city (where Katniss forces herself to overeat to put on weight for when the games begin).  In the film, the people in District 12 look poor -- they're dirty, tired, and wearing old-fashioned clothes -- but they don't look underfed (if that's the right word for it).  The girl playing Katniss is pretty good in the part, but she looks really healthy, as if she never missed a meal in her life, and that was a problem for me when they flashed back to when she and her family are on the verge of starving to death and Peta throws a loaf of bread towards her.  Her face is just as rounded as it is in the rest of the film (just look at the poster above!).

And her clothing in the opening scenes of the film, where she's out hunting, doesn't look at all bad.  In fact, if you saw a clip of that scene and didn't know anything about the film it came from, you would not guess that she was even poor.  (A side note:  one of the articles below, with a picture of her in that scene, is about how Target is selling a line of clothing based on the film!)

The good thing for me about making this connection to the essay is that I've found the movie I want to use for my big project.  Now all I have to do is decide on which one of the critical approaches on the list would be the best one to use.

Related articles

• 'Hunger Games' sequel moves NC off stage
• First Look at THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, and Sam Claflin
• Easy Halloween Costume Idea: The Hunger Games' Katniss Everdeen
• The Hunger Games fashion collection has arrived

Poverty: Do You Know It When You See It?

Every 3 seconds, a child
dies from extreme poverty
 (Photo credit: Wen-Yan King)

I read an essay by Diana George called "Changing the Face of Poverty," and it got me wondering how many people I encounter every day are actually living in poverty.  One of her points is that if you base your idea of what poverty looks like on pictures like the one I have here, you are likely to misinterpret the size of the problem.  This reminded me of something I heard from a girl I went to high school with:  she told me that she knew a family that had to sell almost everything they owned because both parents were out of work, and the whole family eventually had to cut back on food so that they could look like things were okay with them.  If you saw the kids, you wouldn't be able to tell there was a problem, because their clothing was in really good shape and clean.  She said that the parents refused to apply for any kind of help, like food stamps or going to a food bank, because they were afraid that their neighbors would find out.  And all the while, they were sitting and sleeping on the floor, since they had sold all the furniture.  A couple of days later, I realized that it was her family she was talking about.
 

Related articles

• Census: Poverty Falls Slightly in 2011, Median Family Income Drops (dailyfinance.com)
• Urban Institute - Poverty in the United States (bespacific.com)
• The poverty problem: Cornel West and Tavis Smiley speak out (familysurvivalprotocol.com)