Talking Stick - May/June 2011 - 11

Institution Celebrates Tenth Habitat House
The housing department at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville celebrated an exciting anniversary as they collaborated with the Knoxville Habitat for Humanity program to build their tenth house together. The inspiration to partner with Habitat for Humanity first came about in 1995 when a student brought back the idea after attending a housing conference. Since helping to build their first house in 1996, housing employees and resident assistants at the university have helped raise over $225,000 to build homes for several families within the East Tennessee community. At the start of each year, the university housing department selects a hall director to oversee the fundraising and building committee. To help organize fundraising efforts and generate ideas, a resident assistant is selected from each of the twelve residence halls to serve as the Habitat Honcho for their building. Together, this group plans and designs several fundraisers, primarily throughout the fall quarter, to help raise money to build the houses. Some popular fundraisers include bake sales, “Pie Your RA,” openmic night, and the Haunted House for Halloween, which typically generates between $1,500 and $1,800. A portion of the money raised for Habitat for Humanity also comes from the community shares program. This system gives employees the opportunity to donate to agencies such as Habitat for Humanity through payroll deduction. Jerry Adams, the associate director of residence life, notes the significance of allowing students to serve the Knoxville community and work together with the families: “We are a small part in a family owning a home.” For Nick Gordon, this year’s Habitat for Humanity chair, the opportunity to work with these families has been the most rewarding aspect of the program: “There has been a family member at each of the builds so far. Seeing how badly they want this house for their loved one and how much it means to them and will mean to the new owner is extremely rewarding.” — Bridget Cunningham

I Don’t Care That She’s an iPod, I Love Her!
Electronic devices have saturated our lives, and most older adults own and enthusiastically use several. But young adults are the most devoted of the devout, the most likely to own devices from laptops to game consoles, to use most of the functions a device offers, and to depend on these devices heavily. Cell phones obviously lead the way: 95 percent of Millennials (for the purposes of this survey, that’s people 18-34) have a cell phone, compared with 85 percent of the general population. Music players, in the form of an iPod or another MP3 player, are the second most beloved item for Millennials, with 74 percent possessing one. Millennials eschew clunky desktops for more portable laptop computers; 70 percent have a laptop, while only 57 percent own a desktop. Millennials and Gen X are both considerably more enthusiastic about electronics in general than are other generation groups, and this is expressed most vividly in the statistics for game consoles: 63 percent of both the younger generations own one. Only 1 percent of Millennials did not own any of the devices discussed in the survey, compared to 9 percent of all adults. To see more about this survey, conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, visit http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1879/gadgets-generations-cellphones-laptops-desktop-comupter. — Emily Glenn

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IN THE NEXT TALKING STICK
Coming in the July-August issue: · · · A primer for debt financing. Refreshing programming options for graduate students. Taking gender-neutral housing assignments from concept to reality.

MAY + JUNE 2011

http://www.pewresearch.org/pubs/1879/gadgets-generations-cell-phones-laptops-desktop-computer

Talking Stick - May/June 2011

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