Word: homelessness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Once again it is that time when we give up a dining hall meal to the homeless. Here's how it works: You sign up in advance to skip dinner one night, and Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) donates $1.50 to a local food-for-the-homeless program. You go and eat at Chef Chow's, and in addition to the warm massaging of General Gau's Chicken Balls, you have the feeling of charity and sacrifice in your MSG-coated stomach...
Well, fine, but have you considered looking in that "Ec-10" book sitting untouched on your shelf to figure out why it is that, when it costs us about $7.50 per dinner, only $1.50 of it is actually going to the homeless? Or, for an advanced problem, how we could accomplish the same thing much more efficiently, and perhaps even do better...
...labor is expensive. HUDS cannot, nor should it, lay off members of its dining hall staff for that evening. Hence, 4/5 of the cost of a meal is being paid in wages, regardless of whether a student actually eats it. Only 1/5, $1.50, remains to be donated to the homeless...
...First, let us make the assumption that the value of a dining hall meal to us is $7.50--a conservative estimate of the opportunity cost saved by not eating an average meal in the Square. There are three parties to consider in our "society": the student, HUDS and the homeless. By participating in this program we make the following changes per meal: to homeless +$1.50; to student -$7.50; to society -$6. Even though the $6 in the cost of an individual dinner is somewhat fictitious, it becomes very real when we pay it to eat, without any additional benefit...
...Place: Contemporary Art and the American Social Landscape. Through Jan. 23. explores representations of people, from the homeless to the wealthy, and the places they inhabit...