The Pendulum
NEWS
Thursday, November 9, 2006 • Page 5
Student gives blood, wins iPod | The Oaks opens to final
Red Cross campaign offers programs
to make donating blood ‘interesting’
batch of relocated students
Conor Britain
Reporter
Senior Ben Pierce entered the blood
donation center with the intent to walk out
with a pint less of blood. What he left with,
aside from a reduced blood cell count, was
a coupon for a free 20 gigabyte iPod.
Pierce was the first winner in this year’s
iGive Blood, iSave Lives Campaign, a pro
motion for college students put on by the
American Red Cross that places a scratch
card in the hands of each blood donor.
These cards can award prizes anywhere,
from free downloads from the iTunes Music
Store, an iPod shuffle and, as in Pierce’s
case, a 20-gig iPod.
“I was pretty surprised, I didn’t believe it
at first.” said Pierce, an Exercise and Sports
Science major. “[I’ve] never really won
anything super big like that.”
Debbie Estes, Public Relations Director
for Carolina’s Blood Region of the Red
Cross, said that since the campaign was cre
ated there has been an increase in donors
among college students. However, she said
that the campaign goes beyond attracting
potential donors to give blood.
“We’re always trying to make blood
drives more interesting and more fun,”
Estes said, clearly pleased to see Pierce’s
reaction upon presenting him the mp3 play
er last Thursday.
She added that giving out T-sliirts had
been a way to do this in the past, but stu
dents seem to having fun with this cam
paign so far.
Pierce’s luck in nabbing the iPod does
not come as much surprise when one con
siders that Elon has been the top blood col
lector in the Carolina Blood Region for a
number of years.
Elon gave 381 pints of blood last year,
according to Kristen Kruhm, the Blood
Donor Recruiter for this region, earning the
university the Golden Heart Award, given
out to the top five donors in the region. The
university has already given 206 pints from
this latest blood drive, occurring on Oct. 24
and 25.
Elon will look to continue to uphold its
reputation in January, when the Red Cross
hosts another blood drive on campus and,
according to Estes, students will have the
very same opportunity as Pierce did when
he won his iPod in October.
“It was going to be on my Christmas list,
and now I don’t need to worry about it.
Pierce said. “All I did was give blood.
Contact Conor Britain at
pendulim@elon.edu or 278-7247.
Conor Britain/ Photographer
Ben Pierce signs the confirmation papers to receive his new iPod. Pierce was the
£lon student to win the Red Cross scratch-off iPod give away sweepstakes at Elon.
Danica Sands
Online Editor
When Elon sophomore Elisa Bookman
first opened the door to her temporary apart
ment in Partner’s Place, she found chaos.
Construction workers were everywhere,
touching up fresh paint and finishing light
fixtures.
Bookman and her mother walked into
the kitchen where there were no knobs on
the cabinets. In her bathroom, the knobs
were actually attached backwards. The win
dows lacked blinds.
A smoke alarm pierced the silence for no
apparent reason. And as she attempted to
hook up her computer. Bookman discovered
the connection didn’t work.
Home, sweet temporary home.
Bookman was one among many Elon
students who found themselves in awkward
spots when they discovered that their new
apartments in The Oaks development were
not ready for the start of fall semester.
Campus officials scurried to find tempo
rary housing for the 400 students waiting to
move into the new, unfinished Oaks units.
In Bookman’s case, the short-term home
was not exactly a finished product either.
But it was, at least, more ready than her
eventual home in The Oaks.
Almost halfway into the semester, the
residents of buildings A, B and C settled
into their homes in The Oaks. This week
end, the last of The Oaks residents will
move into building D, ending the temporary
housing agreements for all of The Oaks res
idents.
When construction plans began for
Elon’s newest on-campus housing. The
Oaks, few anticipated the impending catas
trophe. Collegiate Development, the student
housing developer that was hired to build
The Oaks, hit their first roadblock while in
the planning phase. This was the first of
many delays that led to hundreds of students
being displaced when they returned to Elon
for fall semester.
The problems began to emerge in late
summer whenever students began receiving
e-mails and phone calls about the construc
tion delays. Elon junior Brandy Troxler was
an early arrival and had been hearing whis
pers about the delays for a few weeks.
I was kind of upset when I heard the
news, she said, “But I wasn’t very sur
prised.”
Troxler was placed in a temporary suite
in Partner s Place when she arrived in late
August for job training. She loved the mod
em feel and all the extra space of the apart
ment. What she didn’t love was the fact that
there was no Internet connection and that
her brand-new, just-installed dishwasher
was already broken.
There was also the fact that she couldn’t
really move in. Students had been told by
Residence Life to unpack only the essen
tials. They were expecting The Oaks to be
completed soon.
Assistant Dean of Students Jeff Stein
said that there were several reasons for the
construction delays. But one of the first
problems was water related.
At one point during construction, there
was a ditch, which was actually a stream,
between the areas designated for the C and
D buildings. The footprint of Jordan Center
was so much smaller than that of The Oaks
that the ditch never hindered construction of
the original buildings. But it posed a fluid
new barrier for the expansion.
The ditch was not a new discovery, but
its exact classification was. It was an inter
mittent stream and for construction to
begin. Collegiate Development had to
obtain the necessary permits. Neil
Bromilow, Elon’s director of Construction
Management, said those permits were for
storm-water erosion protection and mitiga
tion of stream.
Stein also said that Collegiate
Development, which is based in Irving,
Texas, had some difficulty obtaining those
permits from the NC State Department of
Natural Resources.
“Elon works with many out of state
groups, but at times it appeared to compli
cate matters that Collegiate is not from the
area or state,” he said.
There were also issues after the permits
were obtained, Bromilow said. Collegiate
had to figure out how to construct The Oaks
buildings and also have room to fit the
required sediment basins on site.
Once Elon officials realized they would
encounter significant delays, staff members
in various offices mobilized. Using infor
mation from Collegiate, Elon administrators
developed plans to communicate with fam
ilies, find temporary housing and to pay for
these immediate steps.
Stein said they were “very conservative”
while choosing the initial dates for move-in.
But, it turned out, they were not conserva
tive enough. They pushed back deadlines
more than once.
As some students began arriving early to
participate in activities prior to the start of
the semester, officials encountered another
big problem: They were forced to split up
groups of roommates intending to share
See OAKS p. 7