To the editor:

When I was very young, visiting family in India, I asked my mother why there were people sleeping on the streets: Saddened, my mother replied, “These people are homeless.”

Now, as a college senior, I work at an agency in Iowa that deals specifically with homeless youth, and unfortunately I still ask the same question. Why is it that people have to sleep on the streets?

I applaud the students that attempted to recreate the plight of the homeless by spending a night outside last week. But when you slept in a box with no shoes on outside in 60-degree weather were you opening an eye to homelessness or were you just camping out?

To understand the disenfranchised one must observe them in their futile attempts to survive in this cold world.

You have to stand alongside the government-abandoned mentally ill as they wipe adult stage lice off their face and mumble about death that doesn’t come.

You have to talk to the frequently molested and raped homeless children and victims of broken adult promises and every degenerate that claims to be a friend or a relative.

When you talk to them you wonder why society has given up. After you have labeled them as drunks or parasites, it is easy to ignore them. After you have said in your heart that this is a just world, and people get what they deserve, one more eye has been closed.

As another homeless person loses another tooth to poor nutrition, you can hopefully remember they are still humans.

Jacob Varghese

Senior

Child and family services