With stressed-out and overheated parents concealing teary eyes behind cardboard boxes, thousands of freshmen moved into East Halls this weekend amid crammed vehicles floating in a sea of orange mesh fencing.

"I think I have too much stuff," Michele Derr (freshman-education) said as her mother struggled to drag her television into Bigler Hall.

Hall Haulers, students who helped with the process, were on scene to curb move-in meltdowns.

"Usually the females have more stuff," Hall Hauler Kerrie Leslie (junior-mathematics) said. "I lived in Snyder [Hall], so I remember this. There wasn't this much help when I was here."

Office of Physical Plant volunteers also assisted, toting hoards of belongings with landscaping vehicles.

"It's great," Nancy Dreher, mother of Derek Deibert (freshman-premedicine), said of the service. "It's one trip with those carts. By ourselves, it would have taken much longer than that."

The scene in West Halls, typically reserved for upperclassmen, was a little less hectic.

"It is pretty slow here," Prashon Ghosh (senior-engineering) said as he read a book behind the Waring Commons desk yesterday morning. "Most of the people here know what they are doing."

Kacey Baer (freshman-division of undergraduate studies) said she was pleased she paid a fee to move in early and avoid the chaos.

"It's crazy right now," she said. "I saw the lines down the hall and the one broken elevator."

Even for the seasoned veteran, this weekend's heat was almost too much to bear.

"I'd rate the stress at seven on a 10-point scale," Jim Richardson said as he guarded a heap of bedding belonging to his stepson, Lyle Price (freshman-computer science). "The humidity of 150 percent doesn't help. Some parents ... they fritz. There's no reason for it. They all get to move in. They aren't going to start the year without them."

A nervous Nick Smigel (freshman-science) worried the year might actually start without his roommate.

"I hope he comes," Smigel said. "I keep sending him e-mails, and it says 'fatal error: does not exist.' "

A bigger disappointment came when Smigel realized his dorm, Packer Hall, is an all-male dorm.

"No one told me that," he said. "Now, I'm really upset."

As an only daughter, Jen Chen (freshman-accounting) said the female vibes of her four-person supplemental room would take some adjustment from growing up with brothers.

"I was kind of upset," she said. "They said that if they have enough regular rooms they will move us out, but I don't think that is going to happen because there are so many people I know that live in supplemental."

Ashley Semper (freshman-sociology) said she wouldn't want to depart from her supplemental situation.

"I like it better than a two-person dorm," she said. "We have a kitchen and a bathroom."

Lynn Dubois, associate director of housing, said there is currently no waiting list to live on campus, and all applicants for housing were offered some sort of contract.

For other campuses, the situation was different.

As of last week, Penn State Altoona had 238 freshmen and 95 returning students on their waiting list for on-campus housing, said Alison Bonsell, director of Housing and Food Services at Altoona.

"It's constantly moving," Bonsell said. "We stopped taking names at the end of June. People drop out. People get homesick and just want to go home, so we call people off that list."