Inside Keeney Quadrangle Tuesday, Megan Dansby '10 and Kendalle Bennett '10 could be found organizing their basement double, which was filled with pink decorations and empty cardboard boxes. The two girls busily chatted about how to install their identical printers as a chick flick played in the background.
Dansby described how she explored Providence while attending the Third World Transition Program earlier in the week, telling a story about swing dancing with a stranger during WaterFire as she clung to a can of mace.
"I'm excited about exploring the city," Dansby said.
"I'm excited to party!" Kendalle replied, eliciting a half-serious "uh-oh" from her roommate. The two quickly resumed discussing how to make the best use of their space.
Similar exchanges occurred throughout first-year residence halls Tuesday and Wednesday as the class of 2010 began arriving on College Hill in full force for the beginning of Orientation events.
Officers from the Department of Public Safety and the Providence Police Department shut down Benevolent, Brown and George streets in order to accommodate arriving students and their families. Although Tuesday is the lighter of the two move-in days, the campus was noticeably different than earlier in the week, when it seemed only student-athletes and those attending the Third World Transition Program were on campus.
Despite the rapid influx of people, volunteers said the staffing and police contingent contributed to a fairly smooth move-in process.
According to one DPS patrol officer, 12 additional officers assisted the five normally on weekday patrol. A patrolman from the PPD said his sergeant had assigned two separate shifts of seven men to the Brown campus for both Tuesday and Wednesday.
Members of the football team and the Orientation and Welcoming Committee helped first-years lug their belongings up flights of stairs. Several parents let out enthusiastic shouts of gratitude when approached by football players offering assistance. One football player said his coach volunteered the team's lifting power, adding that he was thrilled to have the morning off from practice.
Volunteers from the OWC also moved belongings while giving directions and answering questions.
"This is pretty fun. I'm glad to be back on campus early," said Yifan Luo '09. "There's only 50 or 60-something of us this year though. That's like half of last year."
"Frankly, I joined OWC because I wanted first pick of the hot freshmen," said one sophomore OWC volunteer working outside Keeney Quadrangle who asked not to be named for fear of scaring off first-years.
Inside Keeney, Linda Williams P'10 dropped off her son Michael Williams '10.
"I'm a little anxious," she said. "This is my third child to go off to college, but I'm still nervous, excited, happy. Lots of feelings."
Upstairs, Aden Haddad-Salah, who is eight years old, said he is kind of glad to see his sister, Victoria Haddad-Salah '10, go. "I get her room when she's gone," he said. This piece of information came as news to Victoria.
One atypical Keeney resident is Martin Bell '10. The soft-spoken 21-year-old spent two years in the U.S. Navy and applied early to Brown while stationed in England as a petty officer 3rd class. When asked if he is anxious about being a 21-year-old first-year living in Keeney, he said, "Well, it's going to be interesting."
In Perkins Hall, Jaclyn Terran, the little sister of Jamie Terran '10, said, "I'm sad to see my sister go. It'll be a big change."
"Oh, I'm flipping out. Just devastated," Jamie's mom, Linda Terran, said.
Meanwhile, Jamie seemed relieved to finally move into her new home in Perkins Hall. "I really did see a lot of camaraderie when I was in Perkins during (A Day on College Hill), so I wanted to live here."
Another Perkins resident, Pablo Larios '10, hails from Tulsa, Okla, and has previously lived in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. As students moved in, he walked through the hallways, introducing himself to his new unit mates.
"I'm so excited to be here. I can't wait to meet people of different interests and getting to know professors," Larios said before disappearing to meet more first-years.
One was Kelly Sanford '10, of Santa Cruz, Calif., who said she looks forward to living in Providence. "I'm excited to see snow and to live in a more metropolitan area."
"It kind of hit me when they handed her the ID card," said her dad, Brian Sanford. "Somehow that struck me, but I tried not to let it show because I'm a guy."
Safes: A new dorm accessory
A new addition to first-year dorms are high-tech, electronic safes bolted inside closets and on top of dressers. The hotel-style safes - measuring one cubic foot - were installed within the past three weeks by the Colorado-based company SafeDecisions, which charges students $139.95 each year to rent them. If a student chooses not to rent the safe, it will remain in the closets unused.
Company representative Cynthia Zucker told The Herald SafeDecisions has installed more than one million safes, mostly in hotels. The company is now expanding to serve universities because the items students bring are increasingly valuable each year.
"SafeDecisions isn't about theft; it's about organization. We live in a time when, between laptops and iPods and ATM cards, there's so much to keep up with. With SafeDecisions, you know where things are," Zucker said.
Zucker said other colleges typically try out the program with first-years and then eventually install safes in all of their residence halls.
A representative from the company's Boulder headquarters told The Herald that safes are installed at no cost to universities, which receive a share of the profits. She declined to discuss Brown's particular agreement.
