Last Thursday through Saturday, nearly 15 Hopkins students participated in the $2/Day Challenge, a social experiment organized by members of the Women's Pre-Health Leadership Society (WPHLS) to give students an idea of what it is like to be homeless.
"$2/Day Challenge is experimental learning . . . where students have the opportunities to get a taste of the complexities and issues of homelessness," senior Nikki Jiam, Co-President of WPHLS, said. "You get to experience life without the things you take for granted, such as clean water, having shelter over your head [and] even technology."
Participants lived outside of their rooms for two days, with only the clothes on their backs, a few toiletries and their study materials. They could study and go to classes, but could only use the computers in the library. These rules were set up to help the students understand what it is like to not have a home to go back to.
"You are required to be mobile with your items and learn the risks, anxieties, [and] emotions and deal with day-to-day issues, such as protecting your stuff," Jiam said. "It requires a lot of discomfort and stepping outside [of] your box, especially because … students [had] classes on Friday."
WPHLS decided to bring the $2/Day Challenge to Hopkins because they wanted people to try to have an understanding of what homeless people go through every day, especially in Baltimore City.
"Hopkins students tend to live in a bubble, so [they're] not aware of the issues that face our community," senior Anita Ram, WPHLS Co-President, said. "Even on St. Paul Street, there are homeless people, and a lot of students don't treat them well and have a negative impression of them. There's so much going on outside our Hopkins bubble that it's very important to bring that onto our campus."
However, as this was an experiment, it was not meant to identically recreate the experience of being homeless.
"The bottom line is that we understand that we are not homeless," Jiam said.
25 people originally signed up for the challenge, which was 10 more than the WPHLS's goal was. However, due to midterms and Rosh Hashanah, only about 15 slept over the first night, and 7 to 10 people the second night. Students generally signed up because they wanted to learn more about the issue of poverty.
"[I signed up] to step into the shoes of those who are homeless in a very small scale, because only two days isn't going to be enough to feel hunger, or to be dirty … now I'll be able to understand some of the hardships," freshman Craig Hennessey said.
Freshman Hannah Zimmerman also wanted to try to experience what being homeless was like.
"One of my really good friends in middle school was homeless, so I was like, ‘That's horrible,'" she said. "I saw this petite opportunity to see how she kind of lived, even though this is not at all what it was like for her. This is a little glimpse into what her life used to be like."
Because this was a University-sanctioned the event, Jiam and Ram, along with Co-Programming chair sophomore Cindy Zhang, had to work out the details far in advance to ensure that the participants were safe.
"The event is not intended to mimic homelessness," Zhang said. "Obviously, we're in a safe area [and] there's going to be a security guard there."
The group originally planned to spend both nights outdoors, but university policy prevented it from happening.
"There's kind of been a conflict between the mission of our social experiment and school policy," Ram said.
WPHLS initially wanted to spend a night on the Beach, but modified their plan to spending one night in Levering Hall and one on the Freshman Quad.
"We do not allow overnight events on the Beach for safety reasons," Events and Scheduling Coordinator Patricia Forster wrote in an email to The News-Letter. ‘The Beach is on the perimeter of the campus and too close to the public streets."
However, Jiam felt that the school was very helpful.
"The Office of Student Life in general [has] been very supportive and have understood where we're coming from," she said. "They wanted to make sure that the students [were] protected in certain ways. We were able to work with them."
The challenge started off last Thursday night with speaker Jackie Robarge, Executive Director of Power Inside, a nonprofit group that works to empower commercial sex workers by providing opportunities for them. Robarge spoke to the $2/Day Challenge participants about a project that she is working on at a new homeless shelter that does not have sufficient capacity to serve all the local homeless people.
"She gave us a real, tangible feeling of what homelessness is," Ram said.
Robarge also spoke about how important it is to make the homeless feel as if they are human beings, even by doing something as simple as handing out hot chocolate.
"[She spoke about] how much of a difference it made because they felt like they were being treated as an individual, instead of being generalized as homeless," Jiam said.
The participants, though they were not actually starving, appreciated small gestures as well. When someone walked up to them and gave them food, they truly appreciated it.
"I have never been happier to get a banana," Jiam said. "To get that bit of [someone's] time and feel like a human, you realize how easy it is to be generalized."
They also realized that it would be much harder for an actual person living on the street to solicit food.
"If we begged here for food, we're not starving. Hopkins kids begging Hopkins kids are going to give money or food more willingly than if I was out on the street looking ragged," Hennessey said. "Out on the street, it's so much easier to be discriminated against because, suddenly, I'm a hobo, not a Hopkins kid doing some event."
Freshman Katie Silva agreed that it would be much more difficult to decide how to assist a homeless person, as people in cities are usually told to keep walking.
"The whole sympathy thing is really hard … I lived in Brazil for 15 years [and] when you walked downtown there were people in blankets, they would come up to you and ask for money," she said. "You'd see some people block them out, they wouldn't exist anymore. I would always try to think, ‘How can they not see them?'"
Because the participants had to carry their backpacks and blankets around with them, they received some stares from other students. Some also felt a sense of isolation as they had nowhere to go.
"One of the things that was unexpected was the whole feeling of alienation. My classes ended and I was walking outside, thinking to myself, ‘Where am I going to go, what am I going to do,'" Silva said. "I'm on this beautiful campus, and I have so many opportunities, but a true homeless person … I couldn't imagine what it would be like if I just walked onto the street. It's a really scary thought and I had a glimpse of that when I walked out of my classroom."
The participants also generally did not expect to feel judged by other students, which made them wonder what the homeless actually feel like. "I never thought about how homeless people have these social implications. People judge them because of their state of appearance, the fact that they have all their things with them," Zimmerman said. "I can now see how society looks towards homeless people in a negative manner, even though for the most part it's not their fault."
Each participant contributed five dollars towards the event, which was pooled towards their food for the two days.
They also realized how difficult it actually is to live on two dollars a day, though their money was put into a communal pool, which made it easier to buy food in bulk, such as beans and rice. Many participants were still hungry after each meal, but they were allowed to panhandle other students for food.
They slept on the floor of the Sherwood room in Levering on Thursday night. Some even tried to fully experience the homeless life by keeping very close track of their possessions. "I tried to sleep with my arms looped through my backpack, and used the other bag as my pillow," Hennessey said. "There was a point in the night where, if I let go of it and if I was in a shelter, my backpack would be gone."
On Friday night, Dr. John Dalton of the Baltimore Rescue Mission Clinic spoke to the group. He had a very optimistic view of homelessness, as he told the group that it is possible for a homeless person to find a talent and succeed. He divided the world into "haves" and "have-nots," saying that one can be homeless and still be a "have."
"He was very different from Jackie. He has a lot of involvement with the homeless population, and he's a doctor, so he was able to focus on medical aspects. He stood back and took a world view of things," Ram said. "I'm not 100 percent sure how many people agreed with it."
Jiam realized just how hard it would be for the homeless to look for jobs, as she couldn't even find time during the experiment to focus on her studies.
"You spend so much energy keeping warm, that I couldn't even put my mind to studying," she said.
They spent the night outside, and even though it was cold, Jiam felt as if the soil was more comfortable than the hard floor in Levering. Due to the weather though, some students did break the rules and go back to their dorms for more blankets. At the reflection session the next day, the participants were asked, if any of them had completely followed the rules, and no one raised their hand.
"We were trying our hardest, but, in general, it was difficult," Ram said.
The WPHLS considered the event to be a success. If they did it again next year, they would like to get different groups on campus involved as well. They would also want to encourage for people to sleep over both nights next time.
"You get tired, your body feels different, it's a challenge, "Jiam said. "No matter how mentally, physically, and emotionally challenging this is, just stick with it, because that second night really put the message through for me."
