Jessi Crain was adamant Friday afternoon that she would spend the entire night inside a cardboard box.
Last year, at the Clarke College Sleep Out event, a bunch of students decided as a group to go inside a building instead of staying outside in the windy cold.
"It was really cold out and the wind was picking up," Crain, a senior, said. "It was really hard to fall asleep. There's no real way to get comfortable at all."
She regretted the decision to leave her cardboard box on the campus of Clarke and sleep inside a building.
"I was kind of disappointed because a real homeless person doesn't have that option," Crain said. "Their shelter is their cardboard box. Several people almost had this feeling of guilt."
On Friday, Clarke students planned to spend 11 hours outside to experience what it's like to be homeless.
"In order to get the full effect, we really do need to spend the entire night," Crain said. "Obviously we're not going to know completely what it's like to be a homeless person
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The event was held as part of the Hunger and Homelessness Week, sponsored by the college's campus ministry office.
Students attended a prayer service before they set up their cardboard boxes at 9 p.m. Friday on the front lawn of the Wahlert Atrium.
Early this morning, students will have breakfast and discuss their night.
"There's such a great benefit from actually putting you in someone else's shoes," said Radie Roberts, Clarke's assistant director of the campus ministry. "They can actually witness what that is like to be homeless."
There was a 30 percent chance of rain Friday night with a low around 34 degrees and wind gusts as high as 30 miles per hour.
"It will definitely be cold," Roberts said. "If it gets bad, they can go in and sleep inside ... My first concern is their safety and health."
Students were asked to dress in plenty of layers, wear lots of socks, bring blankets and surrender their cell phones for the night.
"Which could just kill some college students," Roberts said of going without a cell phone.
Crain has had some skeptical people ask her throughout the week why she would pretend to be homeless.
"I just feel like I really want to experience as much as I can to know what it's like," she said. "Until you go and do it, you don't know."
