Photo by Paola Ramos
In a dark turn of events, Pepperdine experienced an emergency power outage Monday in an attempt to “avoid a potential system failure” — at least, that’s what the public relations email stated. Despite this outage, Pepperdine continued its regularly scheduled programs, one of which was the Spring Break Catalog Release.
This annual event was set to take place in the HAWC at 10 p.m., with presentations for each Spring Break service trips and free Diddy Riese. This isn’t exactly what happened, however. Because of the power outage the event took place outside, with the glow of distant streetlights and on-hand flashlights to allow those in attendance to see. And there were still many in attendance.
A blackout certainly did not keep people from showing up. Indeed, there was quite a turn out. It appears that nothing can stop Pepperdine students from hearing about volunteer opportunities or from receiving a free ice cream sandwich.
The evening began with a quick call to order followed by the speakers from different programs discussing the various opportunities they have to offer students. Though full for this semester, God in the Wilderness is already preparing its spring trip. It sounds like a fantastic thing to do: spending time in nature to feel closer to God and giving your Convocation credits a much needed boost. Project LEAD and Project e(X)ternship followed, both interesting opportunities to serve others and to understand more about careers you may be considering; the latter is a shadowing program in which participants can follow Pepperdine alumni around to get a real feel for what a week in any given career is like.
Finally, there were Project Serve presentations. Along with the normal trips, there is a newly funded Great Books program open to all Great Books student. That particular trip involves students going to Seattle, Washington and living with those who are developmentally disabled to help them with day-to-day tasks. There was also a guest speaker, Ileana Abreu, an alumna, who spoke about her work in the Dominican Republic. After participating in Project Serve as a student, she was inspired to return to the Dominican Republic and help create The Good Samaritan, a language and literacy program, with her husband. She truly felt like she was living her dreams and told all those present, “You can live your dream, and Project Serve can be a part of that.”
After, students were encouraged to check out catalogs and sign up to receive more information on provided iPads. And even though the students were there for the sake of listening to volunteer opportunities, many were glad to receive a free treat from Diddy Riese.
The blackout could have canceled this event, but students still arrived and listened intently to the information about the different trips and what these trips can mean to them. Anushree Mahajan, senior Biology major and Project Serve coordinator, was delighted by this: “I am just so excited that we had such a great turnout. I was worried that no one would show up because of the blackout, and we had presentations of each of the trips, but obviously we couldn’t do those. But either way, this is great, that people came even though we couldn’t have our event the way we wanted to. It just shows that students here really care and want to get involved.”
_____________________________________________________________________________
Follow the Graphic on Twitter: @PeppGraphic
As published in the Oct. 3, 2013 issue of the Pepperdine Graphic.
