Mason Walker, President of Mesa College’s Associated Student Government, posed as a homeless person for three days and two nights along with four others as part of a non-profit organization.

Walker, 30, slept and dwelled in downtown San Diego April 9 through the 11 with three other ASG members from San Diego City College, San Diego State University and Miramar College, as well as the C.E.O. of the non-profit organization Embrace, which hosted the event.

“There is a huge homeless population not only in San Diego, but on this campus in particular,” Walker said. “We wanted to go through what they go through to see if we could provide better things for them.”

Throughout the weekend, Walker kept a journal documenting his travels and the people and situations he came across.

“We hung around downtown at Embarcadero Park, Seaport Village, 8th and E, and 15th and Island,” Walker said. “We also would go to Borders, where a lot of other homeless people went to, because it was a clean place where we could sit down and read and do homework.”

As part of the experience, Walker was not allowed to bring any money or food, though he did say he brought toothpaste, a toothbrush, and Noxzema pads to cleanse his face. In an effort to make money, Walker rapped while Tyler Boden, the Student Body President at SDSU, played guitar. They also worked at the Good Day Center cleaning dishes, tables and the floor as a payment for the food they received.

“People from churches brought us blankets for the nights and some passersby gave us money and food,” Walker said. “I wasn’t there, but someone who saw us on the news gave Tyler a can of peaches and $20.”

Though the group played football games and did things to keep busy during the days, the nights were tougher to get through.

“The first night we tried to sleep underneath the baseball stadium, but security kicked us out, so we slept on the side of the post office on 8th and E,” Walker said. “There were rats running around behind our heads in the bushes. The second night we slept at 15th and Island.”

Though Walker stated his group did not endure any confrontations with police, he said he was scared of getting harassed by them.

“We couldn’t set up our beds until after 9:00 p.m. and were woken up every morning by a loud siren at 5:30 a.m.,” Walker said. “We had to get up, otherwise we would be ticketed. We also had to sleep right up against the walls because if we were too far out, we would also get ticketed for obstructing the walkways.”

During the weekend, Walker met some interesting people and saw some unusual things.

“We talked to this guy Jimmy. He knew every verse in the Bible, and was talking to us about it,” Walker said. “I also noticed that some people were walking around with bluetooths and cell phones. There was this young couple who had two kids. One was five and the other was around two. The dad didn’t work and the mom lost her job and they were evicted from their home, so now the whole family was living on the streets. A lot of the homeless people are just normal people in bad situations. People were showing us pictures off their cell phones of what they had before.”

Though most people realized the group was not truly homeless, Walker noticed the harsher treatment of regular civilians.

“Most people were nice to us because they could tell from our clothes and appearance that we weren’t really homeless, but they didn’t talk to anyone else that wasn’t in our group,” Walker said. “It’s as if homeless people are invisible, and people are oblivious. One of the nights these girls drove by us and yelled at us, ‘Get a job, bitches.'”

Though being homeless was stated as being very boring, the experience served as an eye opener to Walker.

“It really frightens me as a black man that I could be homeless at any given point because there is a high unemployment rate among African Americans in America,” Walker said. “I feel dangerously close.”