Celebratory pub crawlers wait in line to enter Ray’ s Corner, one bar that held drink specials for the day. This years Pub Crawl fell on the same weekend as St. Patrick’s Day, meaning downtown was swarmed with a sea of green-wearing participants. (Photo by Kathy Kroeger)

Pub Crawl saw a slower-than-usual start as more crawlers spent time outside in the sunshine playing yard games and drinking before heading downtown.

Kyle Harris, a senior business economics major, was one crawler who decided the weather was too nice to go downtown early and opted to stay outside with friends first.

“We were cooped up all winter and this was the first really nice party weekend we’ve had so we had to take advantage of it,” he said.

But that didn’t mean the bars watched the annual event fall by the wayside — crawlers were still bustling downtown by the afternoon. Sully’s Irish Pub Manager Chad Smidt said he thought the slower start accounted for more people hanging out into the early-morning hours.

“We had a steady stream of people pretty much all afternoon and at one point had close to 130 people playing beer pong and having a good time,” Smidt said. “When it was all said and done, the day actually seemed to last longer because people were willing to stay out because they didn’t start so early.”

A slower start didn’t keep downtown bars from seeing green, and hoards of people dressed in their Irish-themed apparel flooded the sidewalks in the afternoon and into the early morning.

With drinking and socializing comes hungry stomachs, which left many crawlers on the hunt for one thing: food. A few pizza places jumped in on the action to help keep stomachs full of something other than alcohol. George’s Pizza, located near Cubby’s, The 9 and Skinner’s served around 300 pizzas, or 2,400 slices from 11 a.m. on Saturday until the bars closed down at 2:30 a.m. on Sunday. George’s Pizza Manager Makayla Herman said the local restaurant had a good day, even though this year was more tame than usual.

“People were less rowdy and there were not as many fights and drama. Most people were having fun playing yard games with the nice weather so it was calmer than it normally is,” she said. “But it was not a bad year (revenue-wise) for us, either, by any means.”

Once he finally made an appearance downtown, Harris described the scene as “wild,” but his memory is a little foggy.

“You think I remember downtown?” he said, joking. “The stuff I remember was good but I don’t remember much of it.”

Although crawlers like Harris might have relied on Facebook photos and wall posts to help fill in the blanks of their Pub Crawl experiences, the Brookings Police Department kept track of their share of city happenings during the St. Patrick’s Day celebration. Assistant Police Chief David Erickson said the Brookings police made three arrests — two for DUIs and one for resisting arrest — among other noted citations.

“We had a lot of calls made to us — 130,” he said. “More people were out playing games in their yards and having parties this year so there was a high volume of calls made probably in result to that.”

Despite the high number, Erickson said Pub Crawl was well managed and there was not an excess of incidents overall.

“Generally speaking, everything went very well downtown,” he said. “Even though it seemed to be busy, people were keeping good tabs on their behavior and we didn’t have anything too outrageous or crazy happen.”

The bars and police were not the only people staying preoccupied over the wild weekend and Safe Ride was kept busy making sure people downtown had a sober and safe ride home. Ellie Trautman, health educator for Student Health Services, said the busses took home 599 crawlers on St. Patrick’s Day alone and 989 total over the course of the weekend, including Thursday and Friday nights.

After a long day, the crawling continued on Sunday for many — although for different reasons.

“I was moving pretty slow on Sunday and couldn’t run so I just went for a walk,” said Harris. “Man, was it worth it.”

much cream in it, or if it’s not the perfect temperature. When he was deployed in Afghanistan in 2007, he would have given anything for a simple cup of coffee, with or without imperfections.

Army Specialist Danny McLaughlin during his deployment in Eastern Afghanistan. (submitted photo)

His friend and roommate Justin Schneider, who also spent a year deployment in Afghanistan in 2007, said that’s one of the first things he noticed when he came home from war — how much people “sweat the small stuff.”

“We had worse things to worry about,” McLaughlin said.

Both men are now 26-years-old and juniors attending SDSU. They have each experienced war and are now trying to tackle another challenge: college.

Several students find transitioning back into school after being away on summer vacation for three months a daunting task, but for veteran students like McLaughlin and Schneider, coming back to school after serving time in a war overseas, where roadside bomb explosions and seeing your platoon members die is not an uncommon occurrence, is a whole different ballgame.

McLaughlin completed five semesters at SDSU before his two tours in Afghanistan, but when he returned home he found he had to start from scratch, just as if he was a senior in high school applying to college for the first time.

“It’s a big pain,” he said. “I had already been through the process the first time and here I am, 26 years old, going to Freshmen Orientation all over again.”

He said Freshmen Orientation is not as helpful to veteran students. The information veterans need is not covered thoroughly in the orientation.

Last fall, the Armed Forces Association put together a veteran’s orientation to try to solve this problem. But it was deemed unsuccessful, as only one veteran showed up.

“The problem is, we don’t know who is a veteran at SDSU and who isn’t so we couldn’t reach out to them as much as we want to,” said Andy Ellis, the adviser to the AFA. “Most of the people in our group have found us by chance.”

Schneider said the most stressful process veterans face is returning to the classroom and becoming “normal” again.

“What’s normal to us isn’t what is normal to everyone else,” he said. “I was used to knowing what tomorrow, next week, next month, would be like and now that I have the ability to plan my own schedule, my own life, it’s difficult.”

Ellis said this is not unusual for veterans who are returning to the collegiate setting and many veterans find support by interacting with like-minded individuals at the AFA, which meets every other Wednesday in the basement of Sully’s Irish Pub.

“Some members have said they were at the bottom of the barrel and felt depressed because they felt like they were alone in a mass of students who they couldn’t relate to,” he said. “Our group is about camaraderie.”

Classroom triggers

Physically sitting in class comes with its challenges for McLaughlin and Schneider. Both faced injury while in battle. Schneider suffered a back and knee injury that resulted in surgery last September. He also says he hears a constant ringing in his ears if he’s inside a room that’s too quiet.

“You can’t imagine how annoying that is,” he said.

Schneider sits in the front of the classroom because he is distracted by others talking or texting.

“I don’t do well with distractions. I swear, my attention level is about half what it used to be,” he said.

McLaughlin suffered a traumatic brain injury, or TBI, when a roadside bomb stuck him and his platoon members. The injury affected his ability to remember and comprehend things as quickly as he once did. He also endured many concussions due to close contact with seven roadside bombs and four rockets. He believes this may also have affected his ability to learn and remember.

“You have to teach yourself how to learn again, how to study, how to go to school,” he said. “I have to try harder to remember because my memory is so bad — might be why my hearing is so bad, too.”

Ellis said along with injury and distractions, veterans can have opportunities where the classroom in general can overwhelm them.

“Taking a person from active duty and sticking them back into the collegiate setting can be a really tough transition,” Ellis said.

Fitting in

Along with getting through college academically, McLaughlin and Schneider have had their share of social struggles. Having been a world away in a land filled with war, relating to other students can be difficult.

“People think they know about war because they play a video game based off of war, but the war we were in was real,” said McLaughlin. “When we were there the guts were on us and our friends didn’t come back on the next level if they died. Once they were gone, they were gone.”

Also, for a year they lived and saw the same people day-in and day-out and platoon members “became family” so both men have found adjusting to a new place without them challenging.

It’s hard for old friends to connect, said Schneider. Troops cannot call home often,  so many times they miss important moments such as marriages, job promotions and moving to a new place.

“People’s lives continue when we are away and it’s hard to come back and connect with people like you did before you left. People change, we change — a lot happens in the course of a year,” said Schneider.

Moving on

After graduating, McLaughlin wants to pursue federal law enforcement and practice forensic psychology. Schneider wants to use his agronomy major and help farmers be more efficient to get better yields.

Regardless of the trades they pursue, both men say the military has given them a maturity level beyond their years and an ability to deal with spur-of-the-moment issues.

“The military makes you grow up pretty fast,” said Schneider. “It has to.”

After seven years of service, Matthew Aschenbrener, assistant vice president of enrollment services, is saying goodbye to SDSU and pursuing another position at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater.

“I’m an SDSU alum, so it was fun to come back and work here with an exceptional staff,” Aschenbrener said. “We have a fantastic support staff that works to make the student experience successful, so I will miss them and also the students.”

Currently, Aschenbrener’s duties include helping students through difficult situations such as illnesses, death, accidents and military leave. He also works with records, enrollment, financial aid and other sectors of SDSU.

One project Aschenbrener was integral in implementing was the online tuition billing procedure. Before, students would have to stand in different lines during the billing process, but now with the option of paying online, they can save time, Aschenbrener said.

“They can pay online if they choose, which wasn’t available when I started, so that’s something we worked to implement, and it’s been successful,” Aschenbrener said.

Marysz Rames, vice president of student affairs, said Aschenbrener played a critical role in designing other student success tools.

“He’s been instrumental with the student success model,” Rames said. “He works great with students to make sure they have the best experience at SDSU as possible. He has high expertise and he’s very personable.”

Aschenbrener’s new position as assistant vice chancellor for enrollment and retention in Whitewater will be similar to the job he has at SDSU, but with more responsibilities. He will be the new supervisor of the records, financial aid, enrollment and other campus offices. It is a new position the university is implementing, and Aschenbrene

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Young Hall is saying goodbye to old and outdated, and hello to new and renovated as its bathrooms are scheduled to receive a construction overhaul.

Jennifer Quail, project manager for facilities and services, said the estimated $1.7-million construction project is set to begin May 9 and end August 15.

“Following finals week, all of Young Hall’s eight bathrooms will be gutted completely and replaced with new showers, sinks, toilets, fixtures and also updates to the heating and ventilation units,” Quail said.

Young Hall is one of the remaining residence halls on campus in need of bathroom renovations, and students living there are not sad to see the old bathrooms go.

“The bathrooms now are kind of scary,” said Courtney Nogelmeier, freshman from Homer, Neb. “They are definitely the stereotypical dirty college bathrooms.”

Along with new bathrooms, the renovation will include a new laundry station with two washers, four dryers and a utility sink. Nogelmeier said these changes make her more excited to live in Young Hall as a sophomore.

“It’ll be really great to have washers and dryers on every floor next year like some of the other dorms have,” Nogelmeier said. “Because of the updates that are going to happen I am more excited to live in Young next year.”

Quail said the renovation will be comparable to the new bathrooms that were installed in Binnewies Hall almost two years ago.

“The bathrooms will have a lot of similarities to Binnewies, but we tried to keep it a little unique with the finishing touches so you knew you were in a different building,” Quail said.

This is the first major renovation for the Young Hall bathrooms since the hall was built in the 1960s, and Quail said the project is well overdue.

“Young Hall is definitively in need of an upgrade,” Quail said. “We’ve been waiting a long time to get Young new bathrooms, so we are using our resources to the fullest extent to make that happens. It should be a great plus for the dorm.”

Kristen Carlisle, complex director of university housing, said the new bathrooms will make students feel more at home while living in Young Hall.

“We want the new bathrooms to add to the atmosphere of Young and make it feel more like home to students,” Carlisle said. “We’re really excited for this and think the residents will like the finished project.”

Carlisle said student input was a big part of the planning process for the project when it came to choosing color schemes and also the general layout of the bathrooms.

“We wanted to create something the students really wanted and give them a voice in the planning process,” Carlisle said. “If we can create a better atmosphere and make students happy, then it’s all worth it.”

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Ashton Wenz and Carson Dinger in 2010

Students who attended the SDSU State-a-Thon will remember the event as a day they gave back to children in need, but SDSU’s Ashton Wenz will remember it for one more reason: as the day her boyfriend Carson Dinger got down on one knee.
The State-a-Thon, a fundraiser for the Sanford Children’s Miracle Network, is one of the University Program Council’s biggest events. It was the place that Carson Dinger, an SDSU alum and current graduate student at Texas A&M, asked Ashton Wenz to be his bride.
“I was shocked when it happened,” said Wenz, who was the lead UPC coordinator for the event. “I was up on stage giving my thank you speech and I was beginning to get really emotional because it was such a great day, and then I looked over and Carson came up, took the microphone and popped the question. From what other people said, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.”
Dinger chose to propose at the State-a-Thon because he and Wenz first met  at the event during Wenz’s freshmen year.
“After we met at the State-a-Thon my freshman year we were friends for a long time before we started dating,” Wenz said. “Then one day he asked me out on a date and then something just clicked and we’ve been together ever since.”
Although Wenz was uninformed about Dinger’s plan, many of her friends were not. Catherine Bigbee, UPC advisor at SDSU, has known Wenz and Dinger for two years and said she knew about the planned proposal, but was sworn to secrecy by Dinger.
“Carson told me he was planning it for the State-a-Thon when he was here for Hobo Day, so I knew a long time beforehand and had to keep it a secret,” Bigbee said. “Ashton told me she suspected something so I just had to keep acting like I didn’t know anything.”
Bigbee was even able to help Dinger out with the big moment.
“At the end of the event when Ashton was wrapping everything up, I was the one who snuck him into the [Volstorff] Ballroom and helped him on-stage to surprise her,” Bigbee said. “They’re really great together and love each other a lot. I love them both as individuals and I think they compliment each other well.”
Wenz’s family was in attendance and was able to witness the moment.
“My parents were there so that was really great and Carson had called about a month before to ask permission so that was really special too,” Wenz said.
The wedding proposal was not the only record set at the event. Wenz said this year SDSU raised approximately $34,500—its highest total in 10 years—and around 100 more students than the yearly average participated.
“I am so thankful to all the participants who attended and helped out—it wouldn’t have been possible without them,” Wenz said. “Then the proposal was an added special moment for an all-around great day.”
Although the couple have not set a specific date to hear the sound of wedding bells chiming, Wenz said they plan to have a long engagement and marry in the fall of 2013 after they both finish school.