Nearly 40 EMU students clustered in Martin Chapel in groups of two or three. The room was hushed—an unusual phenomenon for this many people gathered in one room. All faces were turned towards a woman dressed in a floral skirt, standing at the front of the room, about to give instructions. The tension was palpable.

These students, a majority of them nursing and education majors, gathered Friday afternoon, Mar. 22 for EMU’s annual poverty simulation.

“Playing the role of a person who doesn’t exist, but whose situation is a reality … gave me a lot of understanding about the situations of many people who go through the same dilemmas in their lives,” said sophomore Angelo Olayvar.

The event, which has been happening for several years, was co-sponsored by EMU’s Nursing Department and the EMU Multicultural Services Office. Professors, volunteering students, and partners from the Virginia Cooperative Extension played social service workers, a pawn shop owner, a grocery store clerk, and other roles.

Celeste Thomas, director of Multicultural Services, along with Kate Clark, nursing professor, hosted the simulation.

“Our nursing students used to go over to JMU to do the poverty simulation and I thought, Why are we doing this? Just do it here! So I contacted [Clark],” Thomas said.

A number of students from various disciplines volunteered to help with the experience.

“I was a volunteer for previous simulations and always enjoyed it, so I volunteered again,” said senior peacebuilding major Grace Burkhart, who played a realtor and mortgage broker.

At the beginning of the simulation, leaders assigned roles to each participating student. The simulation is based on real families living at or below the poverty line in Missouri.

Clusters of three or four students started in a variety of situations, ranging from the homeless shelter—located by the organ in Martin Chapel— to a couple who had just recently lost their primary source of income. Over the span of four weeks, families were expected to work together to care for children, pay for transportation, get to work on time, and use Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards to cover food expenses.

Over the course of the simulation, a number of students fell from the poverty level to further below it, or failed to move out of dire circumstances. Often, this lack of upward movement was directly correlated to some failure of the system.

Thomas cited an example that happened during the simulation: A car broke down and a parent couldn’t pick a child up from daycare, landing the child in the custody of Child Protective Services.

“A lot of students are shocked that, one, the numbers of people who are impoverished are so high and, two, extra-shocked that there are students with food and housing insecurities among [them], sitting beside them in classes,” Thomas said. “The thing that comes out of [the simulation] is the high level of stress that [students] experience … [you can] take that and say, ‘Okay, you experienced that for 45 minutes, what about people who live under that level of stress all of the time?’”

Still, Thomas noted, “Some students have a hard time getting into [the simulation] and feeling that it is real.”

The simulation is a requirement for several classes. Olayvar participated in the simulation as an extra opportunity for a politics class.

“Since I am from a third world country where poverty is a systemic and huge issue I think that … this poverty simulation [helped] me to understand how it is to be poor in a first world country such as the United States,” he said.

Olayvar noted the impact of the learning experience on his own understanding of poverty in the United States. “The current system in the United States is not really helping those people who live in poverty. Although there are agencies and institutions created to help … it is not enough, because the government fails to address the issues such as wages that are not enough to afford living,” he added.

For the most part, Burkhart agrees that the exercise has merit.

“I think it is a surprisingly realistic experience in terms of the emotions, especially frustration, that [are] accomplished through such a short simulation,” she said.

However, she added, “the group that participates is often a bit homogeneous, so finding ways to diversify the participants would add a different dynamic to the experience.”

The poverty simulation runs every semester. The program’s organizers, including Thomas, are currently selecting a date for this coming fall semester.