More people are seeking the free meals offered by Loaves and Fishes of Tompkins County, a community kitchen in Ithaca, than at any other time in recent memory.

When developmental and environmental psychologist Gary Evans, an Elizabeth Lee Vincent Professor of Human Ecology, moved to the woods of Ithaca from his California home, he had two focuses in mind: the Human Ecology school and his children. He found a challenge by his students to look at poverty and education.

Every day, we wake up after snoozing five times, rush out the door, hurry to our classes and zone out. We buy coffee to stay up but end up napping in the Fishbowl. We whine about the amount of work we have each day, yet waste most of our time on Facebook. We count down the days until the weekend, until the next great frat party, until we can finally drown our oh-so-terrible problems in alcohol — the next best thing in our lives on the Hill, really.

With a name that has become a synonym for vitriolic battle rhymes and militant politics, luminary rapper and noted political activist Immortal Technique is used to controlling a crowd. This Friday, the night before Halloween, belongs to Technique, who will take the stage in the Appel Multipurpose Room on Friday night before a tight group of 300 students, expounding on his political philosophies and explaining his most divisive songs.

“My political views have a historical reference point,” said Technique (born Felipe Andres Coronel) in an e-mail statement. “They have a combination of what I know to be true because I have seen it and what I know to be false because I have lived it.”

Deputy Provost and Sociology Professor David Harris felt that previous books correlating race and poverty failed to accurately and completely identify the mechanisms that lead to the existing socioeconomic race disparities. To address these shortcomings, he wrote a book entitled The Colors of Poverty: Why Racial and Ethnic Disparities Exist. During a lecture yesterday, Harris discussed the analysis of his book as well as how it was composed.

As deputy provost, Harris focuses on University diversity, admissions and financial aid. Harris is also responsible for enhancing the profile of social sciences at the University.

Life is hard. Making money is hard. Being on your own is hard. Recently, these messages have been ingrained into our brains from every media outlet and from all our friends that suddenly decided to forgo a financial career and take a stab at the LSATs. Therefore, it is difficult to sit through another movie that reiterates how depressing life can be without monetary resources. No wonder people willingly gravitated towards the dazzling, though excessively impractical, Slumdog Millionaire this past year for a fantastical escape.

This is the second part of a two-part series analyzing socioeconomic issues at Cornell and in the surrounding community.

When most Cornell students walk into Wegmans for a routine grocery run, they are not thinking about Ithaca’s homeless only a few hundred yards away.

The Jungle is a small tract of land located between the railroad tracks and the Lake Cayuga inlet that provides a safe haven and a sense of community for several of the city’s homeless.

The city has no jurisdiction to kick the residents off the land because the railroad owns the land; in fact, conductors on passing trains often throw water and supplies into the Jungle.