MEREDITH RODRIGUEZ
Assistant News Editor
National Week of Hunger and Homelessness Awareness fell on a disastrously windy week. The Santa Anas blew over four makeshift Shanty Town shacks set up in Joslyn Plaza Tuesday night, forcing a couple of groups to take shelter inside.
“Last night it was three of us and three Tri-Delts next to us,” Pi Phi junior Evyan Jarvis, a Shanty Town participant on the Pi Beta Phi and Rotaract team, said. “I think the other two groups gave up and went home.”
A couple of groups’ impromptu conglomeration of trash bags, cardboard boxes and duct tape designed to raise awareness of homelessness, fell over. The others barely withstood the elements.
“I definitely slept about 45 minutes,” said Pi Phi senior Jennifer Akamine, who volunteered in the simulation with friends Jarvis and senior Jessica Haynie of Rotaract Tuesday night. “It was so incredibly windy that our shelter fell apart. It felt like we were in the middle of an earthquake for eight hours.”
The Pi Phis said the wind ripped their shelter’s duct tape off the Plaza’s walls and flipped one of their tables over, knocking it down a hill.
“We were awake most of the night because we were not used to the sound,” Jarvis said. “I definitely woke up very grumpy.”
Though annoyed by the wind, Akamine and Jarvis said their night gave them a clearer perspective of life through the eyes of the homeless, who have no option but to wait outside for the weather to blow over.
Their newfound perspective is the purpose of Hunger and Homeless Awareness Week.
“This week is about awareness,” Nikhil Jacob, PVC co-coordinator of Shanty Town said. “It gives students a hint of what people (on Skid Row) have to deal with.”
One to three people in each of the four participating groups were expected to remain in the shacks from Tuesday night to this morning.
The four participating groups were Pi Beta Phi paired with Rotaract, Delta Delta Delta, the PVC paired with Gamma Phi Beta, and Alpha Phi.
Groups accrued points by attending the weeks’ Hunger and Homelessness Convocations, sleeping in Shanty Town shacks for two nights and raising money in group-constructed Lego houses and in cans sitting outside the shacks.
The proceeds will go to Children Helping Poor and Homeless People, a group that turns 16 cents into a meal for a homeless person, according to Jacob.
“To us, 16 pennies is nothing, but to them it’s a meal,” Jacob said.
The group who raises the most money and attends the most Homeless Convocations will win a gift worth $100 from Inter Club Council. They will also have the privilege of presenting the money to CHPHP.
The awards, camaraderie and assurance that the following night they may sleep in warm beds made participants realize that their experience in Shanty Town was not completely realistic. Students sat outside with blankets, books, laptops and sleeping bags. Plus, participants did it by choice and had their friends nearby.
However, their night spent braving the winds presented a glimpse into thousands of people’s reality, according to Jarvis and Akamine.
“Even though what we did wasn’t remotely close to what they have to go through, I think it’s definitely a good reality check just to know that there are so many people in the world who have to deal with that on a daily basis,” Akamine said.
Jarvis said she wished that more students at Pepperdine could have experienced the eye-opening effects of Shanty Town.
“I wish more people were involved,” she said. “I don’t know how beneficial it is to walk by and see the shanty.”
As for the wind that may have deterred some: “Well, there probably should have been better weather,” Jarvis said, “but at the same time it made it more realistic. It made it more of an experience.”
(Will include a FactBox of Homelessneess in L.A. Stats)
11-17-2005