Homelessness might not be something the average student thinks about while walking across campus, but some ISU students tried to change that Tuesday.

The fourth-annual Sleepout for the Homeless, from noon Tuesday through noon today, featured students camping out in cardboard boxes by the Campanile to raise awareness of the problem of homelessness.

The sleepout was sponsored by the Student Service Team from St. Thomas Aquinas Church and Catholic Student Center, 2210 Lincoln Way.

Carrie Chavez, sleepout organizer and peer minister at St. Thomas Aquinas, said ISU students need to realize the number of people in America who don’t have homes.

“It’s just good to get college students aware, whether it’s homelessness or other issues, because I think we live in our little microcosm, and we don’t realize that there’s a very real world out there,” said Chavez, junior in sociology and Spanish. “Most of the people here at Iowa State, I don’t think, have seen or observed people actually lying in boxes.”

Vinay Tauro, member of the Student Service Team, said homelessness in Ames is not an issue many people are aware of.

“In Ames, you don’t really need to confront homelessness so much, but there are homeless people, even in Ames,” said Tauro, senior in computer engineering. “If you go to the Emergency Residence Project — it’s a shelter for the homeless people, on Kellogg Avenue — there’s people there pretty much all the time.”

Greg Bahl, senior in electrical engineering, said by camping out in cardboard boxes, participants in the sleepout are able to get people’s attention.

“It’s kind of dramatic,” he said. “It’s kind of like, ‘What the heck are all these morons doing out on campus in cardboard boxes?’ You get people to wander over and go, ‘What’s this?'”

Even those who don’t stop to ask questions may be influenced, said Ann Staniger, sophomore in graphic design.

“If people walk by and don’t say anything, they see something is happening on their campus,” she said. “The next time you pick up something that says ‘homeless’ on it or you see something, it might encourage someone to look at it and read it and figure out more about it due to the fact that they saw some crazy people out here in the middle of campus.”

Petitions and postcards to mail to state and national legislators were available at the sleepout, Tauro said. One of the issues the organizers wanted to tackle was raising the national minimum wage from $5.15 to $6.15.

“Even if you do increase it by a dollar, it’s still really insufficient. You’re still going to struggle,” he said.

Even with the $1 increase, a person working full-time would earn only $12,000 to $14,000 per year, Tauro said.

“With $14,000 on minimum wage, you still don’t have enough for housing and for food and all the other things you’re going to need, but it’s a step in the right direction,” he said.

Nate Rauh, member of the Student Service Team, said a petition, which was to be sent to the Iowa Legislature Friday night, was being passed around to increase funding for the state food stamp program.

“It’s a way of getting food for low-income families. Generally, you don’t get people misusing that. If you just hand them money, they can use it however,” said Rauh, senior in computer science.

Staniger said a lot of people wrongly assume most people without homes choose to live that way.

“Homelessness isn’t necessarily something people want,” she said. “They are working, a lot of homeless people are working to improve their lives. I don’t think that’s realized often enough by the community.”

Although the U.S. economy has been very good lately, there are still too many people unemployed or with low-paying jobs, Tauro said.

“There’s a lot of talk about how well the economy is doing, and it is,” he said. “But if it’s not helping every single person out there, then that statistic is still pretty much meaningless. If everyone can’t benefit from that kind of economy, then we’re still not doing enough.”