Hillel at Binghamton University, in partnership with other student groups as well as Amnesty International and the New York Public Interest Research Group, organized the Oxfam Hunger Banquet on Tuesday night. The event was designed to raise awareness about the issue of hunger in society and was attended by approximately 40 students.

Each was given cards randomly, which identified them as either high, middle, or low-income citizens. They were served food according to their status, with low-income students serving themselves rice while eating on the floor. High-income students were served salads and other dishes by volunteers. Following the dinner, a fair was held with more information.

The fair offered students information about getting involved in hunger and other issues. It also offered them a chance to make a few peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for area soup kitchens, said organizer Rich Zamore.

“It definitely raises awareness,” he said. “It makes hunger hit home.”

Hillel member and BU student Rachel Ainspan said she hopes students left the event realizing that while there is enough food to feed the world, many don’t have access to it.

“This is a chronic issue,” she said.

BU sophomore Lauren Allman said her experience as one of the world’s low-income citizens was an eye- opener.

“I didn’t know hunger affected that many people,” she said.

Jimmy Carter, former president of the United States and author of the controversial book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, continues to speak at college campuses around the country about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His next stop will be at the University of California-Berkeley today. As at other campuses, the speech has engendered a negative reaction from some Jewish students.

ASUC Senator Sammy Averbach, who is involved with Hillel and has not read Carter’s book, said he thinks that having Carter speak will not be positive for the campus community because of what he called “inappropriate and blasphemous assertions” made in Carter’s book.

“I want there to be some recognition of the other side,” Averbach said. “The majority of students that are going don’t know about the situation and will hear a very one-sided view.”

Aidan Ali-Sullivan, ASUC Senator Ali Ansary’s chief of staff, said he disagrees with the assertions that the event is one-sided and thinks that it will be a positive experience for the campus. Ali-Sullivan and Ansary are the students who invited Carter to speak.

“He is going to talk for 15 minutes and will answer questions for 45 minutes. How is having individual UC Berkeley students able to ask a former president questions not valuable?” Ali-Sullivan said. “Tell me when it became policy that every time a speaker comes to campus, we have to invite someone to refute him.”

Co-chair of the Israel Action Committee Avital Aboody said the Jewish community is split on the issue, adding that she encourages people to listen to Carter with an open mind and form their own opinions on the issue.

“I don’t think that it serves anyone to automatically react without listening,” she said. “I want to encourage as many people as can to go hear it, and if they have questions to look them up instead of hearing from someone else.”

Prior to Carter’s speech, Hillel will be holding a press conference where there concerns will be laid out.

Deborah Lipstadt, the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University, spoke last week to an audience at the Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium at Cornell University. Her lecture, entitled “Holocaust Denial: The New Anti-Semitism,” highlighted modern anti-Semitism through the lens of Holocaust denial. It is a subject she has unique experience with, having written two books on the subject. Lipstadt also fended off a libel suit from Holocaust denier David Irving several years ago.

The lecture had been sponsored by the Jewish Student Union and Students for Tolerance, Awareness and Remembering Survivors as well as other groups. Lipstadt was introduced by the co-president of Geiborot, Cornell’s Jewish Women’s Forum, Allison Arotsky who said, “Holocaust and genocide awareness in general are still very important issues, especially considering what’s going on in Darfur today.”

Ray Bai ‘07, the president of STARS, asked those present to sign a letter to Congress in support of the Weisenthal Holocaust Education Assistance Act, which would provide funding for Holocaust education.

“After this generation, there won’t be any Holocaust survivors left,” Bai said. “We need to make sure that Holocaust denial doesn’t become more prevalent.”

Lipstadt asked her audience, “How do we respond? What do we do?” Though Lipstadt could offer no overarching solution, she explained that she is currently taking evidence from her trial and posting it online to inform those who do not have the facts necessary to combat Holocaust denial. In order to combat what Lipstadt called the rampant Holocaust denial in the Arab and Muslim world as underscored by comments made by the president of Iran, these pages will be translated into Arabic and Farsi.

“There are many people who have the sense that what they’re being told is not true, but they don’t have the sources to prove it,” Lipstadt said. Lipstadt also advised what people should not do: outlaw genocide denial.

“It’s counter-productive,” Lipstadt said. “It suggests that we don’t have the facts to answer the deniers.”

In discussing the Holocaust survivors who supported her at her trial, Lipstadt described her reason for fighting Holocaust denial.

“Taking care of the dead is the most genuine act of righteousness. With other acts of kindness, people can reciprocate,” Lipstadt said. “I had a chance to stand up for people who had died.”

As part of Hate Crime Awareness Week at Loyola University, a “Deconstruction Zone” was erected at the Granada Center on campus depicting various forms of hate against groups such as Jews, African-Americans, women, Muslims, Latinos and homosexuals. The exhibit was organized by Hillel along with Residence Life, the University Ministry and the Office of Student Diversity. Also taking part were volunteers from various ethnic student organizations.

Upon entering the Deconstruction Zone, a bright light leads visitors into a black room with bleak images of Nazi symbols and pictures of the Holocaust. On one side of the wall, photos of Prussian Blue, a musical group comprised of two twin sisters who sing songs about white pride, are posted.

The next room visitors see is about commercial sex in India, especially in the red-light district where poor people face discrimination because of the caste system and often enter into human trafficking.

Afterward guests enter a room where Hindu students are holding a peaceful prayer service when suddenly two masked gunmen run in and kill them.

In the next room, a female Muslim student speaks about what it is like to go to school and wear the hijab (women’s head covering) as a personal choice. She explains what it means to her and the impact it has on her relationships with others, especially those who are ignorant of Islam.

A timeline of hate crimes lines a wall, including the famous story of Matthew Shepherd, a college student murdered in 1998 because he was gay.

The next rooms evaluate how African Americans face discrimination and the history of racism. At one point, visitors enter a dark room and listen to a recording of a slave who is caught reading by her master as her master yells and beats her for what she has done. Suddenly a curtain is drawn and an actor portraying a slave is pretending to be hung for her “crime.” In the next room, an employer sifts through applications, searching for an employee who is not black, regardless of their qualifications, by looking at where they are from in Chicago and what their names are. “That name sounds so ghetto!” the actress says. The last room was an African-American soldier entering the military, but then facing segregation because the soldier is unable to enter a restaurant because of the color of her skin.

After visitors enter the Deconstruction Zone, Loyola faculty and staff lead a discussion about reactions to the Deconstruction Zone and solutions to end discrimination.

Leah Karp, a 20-year-old junior at Kent State University, was killed in a head-on collision with another driver over the weekend. Karp was on her way to visit her aunt when another driver, Brandon Boles age 22, struck her. Boles was driving with a suspended license and had been drinking before the accident.

Karp’s funeral was 2 p.m. on Tuesday at Temple Israel in Dayton, Ohio. According to her obituary, she is survived by her parents, Lynette and Robert Karp, along with two brothers and four grandparents.

Junior communications major Melody Allison lived with Karp in Centennial Court C as suite-mates. She said Karp had an indescribable laugh, and they would always joke about graduating and leaving Kent.

Allison and Karp laughed about how her teeth-whitening tube looked like a syringe and the possibility of Karp being a “druggie.”

“And she was addicted to plucking her eyebrows — plucking her eyebrows and whitening her teeth. She couldn’t stop,” [Karp’s friend Sarah] Nusinow said with a laugh.

Once while Karp was at home sick, Nusinow finagled her way into Karp’s residence hall bedroom and rescued her beloved pets — a couple hermit crabs.

Karp couldn’t bear the thought of her pets going without care, so Nusinow created a story about needing her friend’s computer, and after a little persuading of residence hall personnel, got permission to enter Karp’s room. Someone distracted the residence hall employee who was monitoring them, while Nusinow snuck the crabs out of the room.

The accident occurred at the crest of a hill, according to police reports. Karp had no time to react to Boles car.