Mark your calendars, Princetonians: it’s poverty simulating time. A tipster forwarded us an email to the class of 2011 that included this upcoming event:

“Experience” the frustrations and obstacles of living in poverty in a Poverty Simulation cosponsored by the Student Volunteers Council (SVC) and the Crisis Ministry of Princeton and Trenton. Participants will “experience” poverty for a month (four 15-minute weeks), and then a discussion about community service, public policy, and the myths of poverty will follow. Free lunch will be provided.

Hey! You don’t get free food in poverty! 100 people have signed up so far to go to “Realville,” where they will roleplay welfare recipients, people with disabilities and old folks living on Social Security, and go to jail and the pawnbroker.

If you’ll recall, Dartmouth just hosted a similar event, the Two Dollar-a-Day Challenge. And that Dartian from Zimbabwe said, “As a person who lives and sees poverty at home, I think it’s sort of a stupid exercise. I mean, fasting for a day isn’t going to tell you what hunger is like,” remember? I miss college.

We had something like this once a year in elementary school gym class. It was called TRAFFIC and we all wheeled around on scooters and if we sped or veered off the roads or ran through the stop sign we were sent to traffic-jail, and when we went through the car wash Mr. Hennessey spritzed us with water. It was exactly like real driving.

The Princeton Poverty Simulation is next Saturday, November 22nd. Who’s in?

Read more:
Volunteers switch roles, experience life in poverty [Princetonian]