Students Sign Up to Fast for Ethiopia

More than 5000 Harvard students will skip dinner one night this month in the annual Oxfam Fast for a World Harvest, according to student organizers.

The $1.25-per-dinner cost of the saved food will be carmarked for Oxfam aid to famine-stricken Ethiopia.

Rence M. Cheng '85, president of the Harvard Hunger Action Committee directing the Nov. 15 fast, said she expects 85 to 95 percent of undergraduates to participate, up 10 percent from last year.

"Students are very sympathetic towards the situation there," she added.

In order to garner pledges for the fast, the committee is manning tables during meals in all the Houses and the Freshman Union. Cheng said.

A local television station and two national, newspapers have interviewed Cheng since her efforts to aid the more than six million starving Ethiopians began.

While she said the incoming money is much needed. Cheng added she feels getting students interested and involved to be of greater significance.

On the same night as the dining-hall last, the committee will co-sponsor a panel discussion and a "Hunger Banquet" with the Catholic Students Association.

The panel will include an Oxfam representative and three or four Harvard professors specializing in African studies, according to Cheng.

The banquet will attempt to mirror the global food shortage by means of lottery-awarded meals, she said. Thirteen percent of the participants will car regular meals at tables, 27 percent will eat rice and vegetables on chairs away from tables and everyone else will eat small bowls of rice while seated on the floor. The committee has a separate banquet sign-up list in the dining halls.

In addition to the biannual fasts for hunger, which are directed at the world's neediest areas, the committee directs the yearly bicycle Ride For Life, held during the summer.

"Everyone says that nuclear war is the worst thing that could happen, but the hunger problem is killing 35,000 to 40,000 people a day," said Co-Coordinator of the Ride for Life and hunger committee member, Thomas A.P. Seery '85