This week, many moved into the newest Penn dorm — a prayer tent on College Green.
The 24-hour prayer tent is organized by Penn for Jesus, an umbrella organization of various Christian groups on campus. The tent is the center of many Holy Week activities. The group plans to have at least one person praying in it every minute of each day.
According to Penn for Jesus Director Michael Hu, typically students in the tent are praying or quietly talking with each other.
“It’s a nice time to re-center your thoughts around what really matters,” College sophomore Sean Massa said.
Massa slept in the tent with three other students on Sunday night, while it was snowing. To combat the cold, the tent is carpeted and has a space heater and blankets.
The tent has to have two people in it at all times — a staff member from one of the Christian organizations on campus, and someone praying. The staff member is there to talk to anyone interested in the tent and other Holy Week events.
The prayer tent first began on Penn’s campus in 2006, when Penn for Jesus joined a nationwide prayer chain on college campuses where different schools would sign up to cover a period of 24-hour prayer. In 2007, they moved the week of prayer from November to Holy Week specifically.
The tent also allowed students from different religious groups to meet one another.
“Conversations that you would never have with people otherwise are able to happen,” Nursing sophomore Elise Taylor said. “You don’t want to leave.”
The walls of the tent are lined with a world map with stickers over places to pray for, scriptures students write on the walls and sticky notes asking people to pray for specific things. The tent also includes a large cross, a communion table and confession table.
The tent is no stranger to mystical coincidences.
According to Hu, in 2007, a drunk Penn student stumbled into the tent in the middle of the night leaving a message that read, “Help me to love my friends and not to kill myself,” and only his initials.
Students and staff in the tent were able to contact him through Facebook. The student returned to the tent later that night, where they were able to pray and talk to him about his emotional struggles.
This year, members of the tent discovered that their 3 a.m. pizza was mysteriously paid for, according to Taylor.
Penn Newman also held Stations of the Cross — a simulation of Jesus’s last walk before crucifixion — on Tuesday. After receiving a Faith Fund grant through the chaplain’s office, Nursing sophomore Andrew Dierkes was able to print out posters of the different stations, which Penn Newman set up on College Green.
“[It] definitely turned a lot of heads,” Dierkes said.
About 35 people were either led through the stations by Dierkes and College freshman Matt Fiore or stopped to learn more about the event as a whole. Penn Newman plans to do Stations of the Cross Again again next year.
The Holy Week events continued on Wednesday, when local pastor Mike Chen came to the prayer tent with his guitar. About 20 students gathered in the tent with Chen at 10 p.m. to sing, many meeting one another for the first time.
Penn for Jesus chose to use a prayer tent since they couldn’t find any other place that they could rent for 24 hours.
“It was really good because we didn’t just want it to be where Christians hide away in the basement of a house or something,” Hu said. “[It’s an] open space not only for prayer for Christians but for people who are interested in Christianity.”
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