Hunger delivers a clear message to people around the world every day. To 34,000 children that message is death. To millions more it is diseases and sickness.

On Tuesday, approximately 60 people gathered in the Sun Room of the Memorial Union to see and experience the effects of hunger around the world in the hunger banquet.

The message the Student Union Board hoped students would take home was not one that would kill them or leave them vulnerable to diseases, however.

It was one they hoped would sensitize them to a problem millions of people around the world face.

To relay this message, people who attended the hunger banquet were separated into three different categories: First World, Second World and Third World.

Two friends – Holly Engelstad and Kathryn Gaskill – were separated at the door. Gaskill, sophomore in political science, was served rice in a plastic bowl sitting on the floor in the Third World, and Engelstad, junior in genetics, was served chicken, green beans, a bread roll and apple pie in the First World.

People in the Second World were given one serving of rice and beans.

“I hope people will see the unequal distribution of wealth we have in the world,” said Tamim Mahayni, SUB awareness director and senior in biology.

One participant, Emily Fifield, senior in history, said she saw the effects of hunger firsthand while studying abroad last summer in India.

She said that effect was felt through the hands of a girl who was about 6 or 7 years old who grabbed her as she was leaving a big shopping district on Mahatma Gandhi Road. At first she ignored her, she said, because she had been told by the locals not to give beggars money. The girl continued to follow her and Fifield said she couldn’t help it. She took some money out of her bag and gave it to her.

“I know that the small amount I gave her will only get her through that day,” she said.

Robert Mazur, associate professor of sociology, was the guest speaker for the event, and he talked about the effect hunger has on communities around the world. Mazur said malnutrition doesn’t only cause diseases and suffering, it affects a community economically by reducing the amount of workers available.

After the banquet, Engelstad and Gaskil were reunited – not something that always happens in reality with people separated by poverty or hunger.

“How many of you in the Third World are planning to get something to eat afterwards?” one participant asked.

As the hands went up, he summed up the reality of poverty and hunger.

“The people you are supposed to represent don’t have that option.”