YSU students try to make ends meet

By Amanda Tonoli

atonoli@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Students scrambled to make ends meet with limited resources during a two-hour poverty simulation at Youngstown State University.

In between whistle blows, students raced from table to table to get fictitious groceries, vouchers, jobs, transportation passes and more Friday afternoon.

Each whistle blow represented the end of a week and beginning of another for the virtual four-week period students had to live in poverty. Challenges included losing jobs, getting eviction notices and dealing with family troubles.

Myisha Patrick, exercise science sophomore student and president of Bridges Out of Poverty Student Union, said as someone who came from a low-income family, she enjoys being able to help others understand what living in poverty is really like.

“I think the exercise changes lives and changes people’s views on poverty,” she said.

Participants were given fake names, ages and roles to carry out throughout the simulation.

Graduate student Julie Thompson went to jail twice during the simulation for neglect when she left her fictitious grandchildren to buy food in the care of her disabled husband who did not feed them.

“It’s been a bad day for me,” she said.

Thompson said as someone who also once lived in poverty, she found the exercise to be realistic when it comes to paying bills and living paycheck to paycheck.

“You really see how things can go from bad to worse,” she said. “It snowballs.”

Shekinah Smith, peer mentor and senior social work student, said, “When I say ‘hardships,’ people don’t understand what I’m talking about,” she said. “They don’t know how to cope or how to deal with poverty. This shows them that. I think everybody needs to experience this.”

Rhiannon Rinehart, early-childhood education freshman student, agreed.

“It was such an eye-opening, cool experience,” she said.

An aspect the simulation highlights is a privilege many students overlook – transportation.

Each student had to buy transportation passes to get to and from wherever they had to go – pay bills, take children to day care, and go to the grocery store.

“I’ve had students coming up to me today wondering how they were going to cash a paycheck and then get back home with only one transportation pass, and they say, ‘There’s no way,’ and there is. It just is through other means,” said Karla Krodel, education outreach director.

Krodel said students’ frustration in the simulation enables a better understanding of “the pressure and economic environment of someone who is impoverished and sometimes their desperation.”

“The intention is to sensitize people and motivate them to fight poverty,” she said. “We’re not trying to lower the bar, but to raise awareness.”