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Paul Bowers won’t be spending his spring break on the sunny beaches of Mexico; rather, the University of South Carolina third-year journalism student will spend his break in Columbia, S.C. — on the street.

His roommate, a fourth-year communications student Matt Wolfer, will join Bowers and together they will document their experiences on the streets for the Huffington Post. Their blog posts can be found at http://www.homelessincolumbia.com/.

Bowers and Wolfer originally planned on staying in the streets the whole week, but after getting mugged at gunpoint they decided to shorten the experiment to just Sunday through Tuesday.

“We want to look, for instance, at the process of obtaining a photo ID when you start with nothing,” Bowers wrote on his blog. “We’ll talk to some families about the impact of homelessness on the home front.”

Bowers spend last summer doing journalistic work in Africa with Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times.

Bowers thought of the idea for this spring break while attending a meeting for Campus Crusade for Christ.

“I wouldn’t say this is for everybody and I don’t want to be self-righteous about it,” Bowers said. “But I think for this particular topic I’m not really going to get it unless I’ve walked a mile in someone else’s shoes.”

At the end of their foray onto the streets, Bowers and Wolfer will resume living in their apartment and going to class.

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