Freshman residential program offers a new way to move out

Even though the freshman class has not yet moved out of a Penn dorm, one group thinks they can help students navigate the process.

Penn Move Out, started this year by students in the Ware College House entrepreneurship residential program, wants to take care of student belongings over summer break.

Shipping company Transit Systems Inc. will oversee the moving and storage of items over the summer. The Penn students are in charge of publicizing the service and working with customers.

Wharton and Engineering senior Ray Cheng, who recently resigned as a residential advisor in Ware College House, said he worked with freshmen in the entrepreneurship residential program to start a company called Penn Move Out.

"We are starting this to have a sense of entrepreneurship and not to have a profit," he said.

Participants emphasized that Penn Move Out has been a student-led project from start to finish.

"We could participate as much as we wanted to," said College freshman Kristen Santerian, a founder of Penn Move Out. "I just became very involved."

She added that, "everyone was willing to take on responsibility. We worked constantly, but it was worth it."

Cheng said the group did all of the work itself, from designing posters to handing out flyers - and it did not break any College House rules while doing so.

"We did not dorm storm," he said.

The company started when Transit Systems Inc. contacted Cheng to ask if the students were interested in making a branch for college students to move out in the summer, Santerian explained.

"We called it Penn Move Out to show that it is exclusively for Penn students," she said.

Cheng said the company is targeting the freshman class, which might be confused about moving out for the first time. The program will be beneficial for both freshmen moving out and freshmen running the company, he added.

"The company is basically the same as Box My Dorm, but cheaper," Cheng said

Posters and flyers plastered across campus direct people to pennmoveout.com, where they can find a price comparison of Box My Dorm and Penn Move Out. Visitors to the Web site can also access a 10-percent early-bird move out deal, said Santerian.

Ware House Dean Nathan Smith said he supports the entrepreneurship program, although he does not personally endorse any moving or storage company.

"These engaged and industrious students have initiated their own business," he wrote in an e-mail. "It is not the first or last of businesses to emerge from the floor's activities, and I support them all equally as outgrowths of our program here."

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