Students walking through the Brickyard today will see the results of recent construction on campus, though the structures won’t be made of brick. The annual

campus Shack-a-Thon, sponsored by Habitat for Humanity, starts at 8 a.m. and will last until Friday night.

The event, which has been a tradition for 10 years, educates the campus community on the state of poverty housing in the United States and abroad. Student clubs and organizations build wooden shacks on the Brickyard and stay there for a week, both during the day and at night. The organizations raise money before the event and continue to raise money throughout the week by panhandling students, faculty and staff passing through the Brickyard for money.

President of Habitat for Humanity Kristin Hoke said the event raised more than $24,000 last year.

“All of the money we raise goes to Wake Habitat for Humanity to build homes in Wake County,” said Hoke. “This year we hope

to raise $25,000.”

Campus organizations compete for the sixteen spots set aside for shacks by raising money beforehand.

“We notify student organizations in advance of the deadlines for registering and for bids to be placed,” said Hoke. “This year we had just under $7,000 of bids and 30 student organizations that wanted to participate. A lot of groups will partner up together so that everyone can be involved.”

The top four money-raising organizations for Shack-a-thon 2008 were guaranteed a spot and provided wood for this year. The Presbyterian Campus Ministry partnered with Accepting and Embracing Gender Identity and Sexuality to come in first place last year.

PCM and AEGIS were two of several organizations hammering together their shacks Sunday morning.  Jeff Preece spoke on behalf of PCM and AEGIS as the head of their construction team.

“We help out with Shack-a-thon because we want to raise awareness for homelessness and show that we care for the community,” Preece said. “Our goal this year is to raise $4,000 and come in first place again.”

Many organizations come up with creative ways to persuade passerby into donating money. Preece said last year his group used cute toddlers and dogs because they make it hard for people to refuse to give money.

Zack Hester, a senior in aerospace engineering and political science, was helping out at the shack for the Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton and Park Scholars Sunday. These organizations also had a guaranteed spot since they finished in fourth place last year.

“This is our biggest service event of the year,” said Hester. “We like to dress up so that people will be more likely to give us money. Last year we used the Emerald City from the Wizard of Oz theme. Because of the construction on Hillsborough Street, we are going to go with a construction theme this year and paint our shack bright orange.”

Hester also added that his group planned to make it into the top four again this year.

According to Hoke, all of the wood used in Shack-a-Thon is donated by companies that can’t use it anymore.

“On Saturday the DCON group will help tear down the shacks, take what they can salvage from it and resell it,” Hoke said. “So none of the wood is wasted.”

“Habitat for Humanity, along with all of the other campus organizations, really hopes that everyone will help out this week,” Hoke said. “It is a creative way to get the campus involved in the fight against homelessness.”