Azusa Pacific Students Receive Crash Course in Life of Homeless

It was a chilly 43 degrees outside, the ground wet from a light shower. Greg Nassir was looking for a place to sleep for the night.

“This is nice and dry,” he said, curling up in a dimly lit corner in front of Azusa Pacific University’s student recreation center, where four other people were huddled. Faint snores and a few sniffles came from beneath the pile of Army blankets and sleeping bags.

Nearby, Brian McLaughlin was peeling an orange, left over from that night’s soup kitchen meal. He shared the fruit with Nassir.

The two sat listening to the sound of water dripping from the gutters. They told each other how best to keep warm, and how to ignore sharp hunger pangs. At least the wind had died down, and the rain had stopped, Nassir said.

They were grateful that in a few hours, as soon as their portable alarm clocks went off, the whole ordeal would be over.

McLaughlin, 20, and Nassir, 19 were among 16 student volunteers at the private $10,000-a-year Christian college who gave up the familiar comforts of dorm rooms and hot cafeteria food Tuesday and Wednesday to promote awareness of America’s homeless. By suffering some of the discomfort and humiliation of the urban poor, participants in the second annual Homeless Day said they began to appreciate what they have.

The rules for the 24-hour period, which ended Wednesday morning, were simple: Stay outside, except during class. No food, except for peanut butter sandwiches and apples handed out at a makeshift “soup kitchen.”

“And no showers,” said Frank Bruce, one of the students who coordinated the event.

“Uh-oh,” said Crystal Fountain, 20, searching through a blue knapsack neatly packed with deodorant, perfume, lotion and a tube of toothpaste. “I forgot my watch. Well, I guess that’s OK because the homeless don’t keep time.”

Tim Flatt, 20, in lumberjack shirt and blue jeans, was roughing it. He had stuffed a couple of blankets in a large plastic bag. Nassir decided not to use his sleeping bag, “so I can experience the real thing.”

As the hours passed and the noises of the outside world swirled around them, the students became solemn. They huddled together in small groups, talking about how strange it felt to be left outdoors in nippy weather. They recited Bible verses and sang hymns. They peered up at ominous skies, wondering whether the coordinators would let them go inside the chapel if it rained.

Some passers-by on the small, 3,000-student campus jeered at them, waving food in their faces and talking about how warm it was inside the recreation center, 30 feet away.

“They’ve been coming around all day, calling us bums and saying ‘Get a job.’ Things like that,” said Jerold Johnson, 18, sitting on the grass. “They’re partly joking, but it’s an attitude the homeless really have to deal with.”

“It’s scary and sad in a way,” said Venkateswaran Seshadri, 22.

At one point Tuesday night, the 16 had gone to a section of Hollywood Boulevard lined with X-rated movie houses and adult bookstores, where the real homeless shivered in 43-degree weather and crouched on doorsteps splashed with gang graffiti. The students covered old men with blankets and handed out boxes of Cup O’ Noodles. Many said it was their first experience with the homeless.

“This is it,” Nassir said. “This is where I want to be. This is where I want to work.”