Students dodged rain and puddles on the Brickyard last week and Took refuge in miscellaneous shacks participating in Shack-a-thon, the largest charity event for the N.C . State chapter of Habitat for Humanity.
Shack-a-thon brought awareness to the high rate of homelessness in not only the local population of Raleigh, but also on the international level.
Emily Bissett , a junior in nutrition science, was outside selling donuts at the shelter shared by Park Scholars, Benjamin Franklin Scholars and the Thomas Jefferson Scholars Program. According to Bissett , the unfavorable weather conditions of last week shed light on the issues the homeless face.
“I think the biggest thing with Shack-a-thon is the fact that it makes it blatantly obvious how evident homelessness is in Raleigh, so everyone living in shacks is a physical representation of that,” Bissett said.
Student organizations put together and populate the makeshift shack community. Habitat for Humanity auctions off spots to vying groups in early September. Since last year, the event’s popularity has risen to the point in which selection has become competitive. Matthew Woelfle , senior in civil engineering and President of Habitat For Humanity’s N.C . State chapter, said the popularity of the event increased since its inception 18 years ago.
“We have some new groups we’ve never have had here before, which shows we have a lot more interest,” Woelfe said. “We actually had too few spots for the amount of groups that came out and we had a bidding competition.”
Shack-a-thon has the capacity to host 17 shacks. Habitat For Humanity and Student Media are automatically qualified to build shacks. The rest of the spots are granted to the top four groups that raised the most from the previous year, and the remaining spots are auctioned off to the highest bidders. Seeing as there were only 11 shacks left and 13 groups present, some groups joined forces and collectively put their money towards a shack.
One of these alliances to come out of this were the shack that held; Presbyterian Campus Ministry, Lutheran Campus Ministry, RWF , Hillel (Jewish student organization) and the GLBT Center. According to Kurt Saenger-Heyl , a sophomore in electrical engineering and member of the Lutheran Campus Ministry, the diversity of this shack presented to irony or dispute. Saenger-Heyl spent time in his shack and met people from different sides of life from this melting pot of a shack.
“We somehow became a very interesting conglomerate of people,” Saenger-Heyl said. “I think it was kind of cool, we had so many people and I made some new friends out of it.”
The mixture had no effect on the main goal Saenger-Heyl said, ”It was about getting the job done.”
From Sept. 6 to the end of the event, NCSU Habitat collected almost $9000. Students stepped up to the challenge in midst of strong rains and frequent flooding.
Although the shacks are now dismantled, NCSU Habitat still welcomes donations online at: http:// clubs.ncsu.edu /habitat/.
