George McGovern said that the key to making progress against world hunger is school lunch.

McGovern, a former senator and presidential candidate who has been an elder statesmen on the issue of world hunger since his appointment by President Kennedy as head of the Food for Peace program, spoke as part of the University Lecture Series to a full Grant Auditorium Wednesday. McGovern spoke about his experiences in the past and his plans for the future. He used the beginning of his opening remarks to talk about his first experiences with hunger as a G.I. in Italy during World War Two.

He told of one of the first times he was arriving in an Italian harbor and heard the voices of several young hungry children as they began to dock.

“I began to make out what they were saying,” McGovern said. “‘Hershey bars, Butterfingers, Wrigley’s gum.”

All of the G.I.s were told to not throw anything over the edge of the boat, because the last time arriving servicemen threw treats overboard a sizable portion of the goodies wound up in the water, as did many of the children who were so hungry they jumped in the dangerous harbor for the measly candy. Twenty of the children drowned in the process.

McGovern said that 800 million people suffer daily from chronic hunger worldwide. He also said that one of the United Nations’ new goals projects that the organization can cut that figure in half by 2015.

“If you are going to try and reach 400 million people, then what better way than to reach the kids,” he said. “And what better way to reach the kids then the federal school lunch program.”

McGovern pointed out several positive effects that are immediately visible when school lunch programs such as this one begin, including better overall academic performance and an increase in enrollment, especially with female students.

“We have seen that both boys and girls go to school if they realize they can get a meal just by getting to their village school house,” McGovern said.

Poet Robert Hass, after admitting that his first experience in politics was campaigning for McGovern, questioned the former senator when he completed his opening remarks.

Since his work with Food for Peace, McGovern took a position in the Clinton administration as a United Nations ambassador to Rome and co-sponsored several bills with fellow failed presidential candidate and former Sen. Robert Dole to aid world hunger. The most recent of these bills is expected to pass before Congress this session.

The crowd rose to its feet in applause several times during the speech and several audience members reminded McGovern about campaign stops he made to Syracuse in years past.

Rachel Plewak, a sophomore nutrition major, said that despite finding McGovern very informative, she disagreed with the former senator on several points that he made. Plewak said that intruding into Third World cultures will not help world hunger, no matter how good the intentions are.

“You can’t go solving the world’s problems by Americanizing them with money,” she added.

Although not SU students, Mirela Subasic and Caitlin Harper-Apti of Nottingham High School attended the lecture because Caitlin’s mother, Kendra Harper, was a fan of McGovern. Caitlin was disappointed, however, that there was not more interplay between McGovern, the politician, and Hass, the poet.

After saying that it would take a $6 billion contribution from the global community to get a program like his started, McGovern pointed to a recent report by the World Bank to illustrate how much it’s needed.

“(The World Bank) put a price on hunger,” McGovern said. “They put a dollar figure on how much it would cost if we did nothing about it. Eighteen billion — 18 billion in lost labor, more disease and lost productivity. That is three times the amount to permit it to exist than to do something about it.”

Published on April 10, 2002 at 12:00 pm