Keeping Students Safe and Warm

SIU Residence Life has some great things going on, and we want to showcase some of our proud moments on our blog. We also hope people who are considering working in RA, graduate assistant, or full-time positions with our department will take a minute to learn more about the things we are doing. More information about our department, including position descriptions, application information, and graduate and full-time staff profiles can be found on our recruitment website.
 
Nelly Jane Chávez, Hall Director in Neely Hall, wrote today's post about her experience volunteering for the Wellness Center's Safety Tents during "Polar Bear" weekend. Polar Bear is an all-day celebration hosted by one of the local bars. Rival bars also host competing events. In the past two years, SIU and the City of Carbondale have collaborated to make sure students who choose to participate in these events stay safe. Safety tents are strategically positioned to provide food, water, heat, and condoms to students. During the 2013 event, volunteers handed out 2,560 slices of pizza, 1,920 bottles of water, 1,080 packages of cheese/peanut butter crackers, 904 bananas, 600 Slim Jims, 226 oranges, and more than 2,100 condoms. Here's Nelly's perspective as a first-year Hall Director experiencing the event as a volunteer in one of the safety tents.
 
When I moved to Carbondale, IL in July 2012, I repeatedly heard about Polar Bear weekend. Many of the conversations came from supervisors and students. Of course each had a different perspective on the infamous Polar Bear weekend. Students spoke about “how much fun it was going to be” while supervisors spoke about the different ways to make sure we were catering to the safety of our students. Honestly, I was really worried about Polar Bear weekend and the activities which could have come from it. Especially, when I was running errands in the morning and saw a line of people outside of Stix (local bar) at 9:30am on Saturday.

While some people were lining up at bars, Residence Life was having several events to keep students active in the halls. Neely Hall had a variety of events taking place on different floors. Every hall had something different going on which saw a lot of attendance from the students. One of the most interesting events though from Polar Bear was the tents set up with food and warmth for the participants of Polar bear activities. The tents had staff, faculty and student volunteers who were handing out pizza, sliced oranges, bananas, glow sticks, water, condoms, crackers and chance to warm up in the tents. All the volunteers had a lot of fun talking with Polar bear participants and of course playing with the glow sticks.

Dr. Jon Shaffer, Director of Housing, and Nelly

Inside the tents we were able to have some interesting conversations with students and even meet the Mayor of Carbondale. It was great to have support from others in the community of Carbondale and a chance to assist with students and their needs during the night. Other than providing food we were able to provide safety tips, forms of safe transportation and also just over all care for the individuals who had a little too much Polar Bear fun. Over all, the safety tents were fun to participate in and definitely one way to get used to cold weather. (Editor's note: Nelly moved here from Texas. The low was in the mid-twenties that night, but temperatures were in the low 40s during the day.)

Michelle Kinney (Mae Smith HD), David Keys (Wall & Grand Apts. HD) and Nelly