Cohabitants: College and Wharton junior Erin Sweeney of New Orleans, College senior Rebecca Tracy of Sewell, New Jersey, and College junior Mei Elansary of Dunn Loring, Virginia
* All current residents at 4028 Walnut are participating in the Penn Public Service Internship.
Did you know anyone in the program before moving in?
Erin: None of us knew each other, but we did a lot of bonding things. We went on a retreat the first weekend.
Rebecca: We're supposed to be collaborative.
Erin: We were supposed to hang out with each other. So we're all tight now.
Would you liken [the group] to a cult now?
Erin: That's what people say.
Rebecca: Yeah.
When was the last time you talked to your mothers?
Erin: (Laughs.) We cook together in the kitchen and everything. It's really weird...I've never seen boys eat so much salad.
That's fucked up.
Erin: Everyone in the house is vegan. I go to eat and they [the boys] tell me, "Don't do it!"
The secret vegan population at Penn is coming out.
Rebecca: Yeah, they're all doing public service. That's where they're hiding.
Erin: Other good stories...(Ponders for a few seconds.) The fourth night we were here we decided we should do something silly so we got our tongues pierced together. I had just met her. We went with another girl who got her bellybutton pierced.
Nancy: I want to get my tongue pierced.
Wanna go now?
All the girls: Yeah. Let's go. (After all agree that Nancy should get her tongue pierced, no one gets up and the conversation continues... Nancy never got her tongue pierced that night.)
Erin: So we came back thinking everyone would say this is so cool... but everyone liked the bellybutton piercing and told us, "That is stupid. Why would you do that with someone you just met?" [They thought] it was weird because I paid for hers and she paid for mine. So we were like, "Clearly if it is a gift, it's not your fault"
What's your major?
Rebecca: History and Spanish... I don't know what I want to do.
Erin: We won Trivial Pursuit with your knowledge.
Rebecca: It was during the retreat.
Tell me about the retreat.
Erin: The retreat was very cultish. It was so camp. We did puzzles and stuff. We played Trivial Pursuit, and it was us and these two other girls [on a team]. All the other teams were really serious about winning, and we were giggling the entire time. It was 3 a.m. and we were still playing so we would just guess. We won in the end with "Who finished in third in the 1968 presidential election?" The answer was Wallace.
Rebecca: But the only reason we knew that was because we just kept answering "Wallace" to like 500 questions.
Erin and Rebecca: Oh hey!
Mei: Hey!
Erin: She is in the cult too.
Rebecca: Mei's the one who got her bellybutton pierced.
Could you each tell us about your specialties within the [Penn Public Service Internship] program?
Mei: I am doing public health. We are going to start a school-based health clinic.
Erin: Mei is big on UC Green. We had Eagles Day at Drew Elementary. The Eagles donated money to get a playground and trees. The kids got a new playground and got to play with the Eagles all day.
Rebecca: I am researching sexual health... As far as we know, [the schools] don't have any comprehensive sexual education program, so we are researching which methods are best for the urban environment... The Bush Administration only wants to fund programs that are abstinence-based. Research shows that safe-sex programs are much more effective than the abstinence-based. They should stop treating teenage sex as deviant when it is really the norm nowadays, especially in urban environments.
Erin: I am doing community-arts. I am researching murals and how revitalizing spaces brings communities together and empowers people so that there is less crime.
Show us your bellybutton piercing... That looks fantastic, but I don't know about these tongue piercings.
Erin: The three of us are the only ones here that are in sororities. And everyone is like, "The stupid sorority girls." They kind of made assumptions about us.
The [assumptions] are not true?
Erin: When there is Diet Coke [in the refrigerator], they call it Sorority Drink.
How many other people drink diet sodas here?
Erin: We're the only ones.
