Caitlin Wiffler ’27
SBIP? NASA? Same thing!
Greetings, and a warm welcome back to the Hill! As Holy Cross’s most reputable news source, The Eggplant decided that the best way for students to learn about the Spring Break Immersion Program (SBIP) was to conduct an interview with one of the students who went on the trip, Casey Jordan ’26. Since we writers here at The Eggplant could not be bothered to conduct interviews, we put our reporter, Anderson Cooper ’27, in charge of this one. Here’s how it went:
Hello! I, Anderson Cooper, am here to report on this year’s Spring Break Immersion. My meeting with Casey Jordan was nothing short of, well, interesting. We met up in Cool Beans this Monday to discuss his trip. He began to tell me about where his trip was, a small town called Marion of Oak-Niles, or MOON for short. He told me that this town was somewhere on the west coast. I asked him what state it was in, but to that, Casey simply stated, “There ain’t water on MOON,” which presumably must be California since there is no water there either.
After establishing where he went, Casey began to take me on a rather peculiar adventure. For starters, his journey to MOON was quite extreme. He told me about how there was a uniform that he was instructed to wear on the plane, and much to my surprise, this was no ordinary plane. “We had these white and red jumpsuits that we had to wear, and this giant helmet. I looked like that lady who’s friends with that square.” After questioning what Casey was referring to, I came to the conclusion that he meant to say Sandy Cheeks, from the show “SpongeBob Squarepants”. “This definitely was not a JetBlue flight. I asked if I could watch “Funko Goes to Jail,” you know, that new Robert Downey Jr. movie, but the flight attendant was all, like, ‘This is the lunar module you have to take with you.’ It was intense,” continued Casey.
At this point in my interview, I was impressed by the level of care and attention from the rest of Casey’s group. While it was a small group (Casey revealed it was only him and a woman named Janet Petro), there were many people before his departure who told him that what he was doing was “revolutionary for America.” I had previously heard some transformative experiences shared by students from their time during Spring Break Immersion, but nothing to this extent! I then asked him what it was like once he arrived at MOON: “Andy I’ve never seen anything like it,” he told me. “I got off the plane and everything was gray. It was crazy. There were these holes in the ground, and that lady I mentioned was like ‘those are craters.’ They even have a different name for pot-holes! And there’s no cars. It’s bare. Only a faded American Flag waves.” I must admit, I started crying at Casey’s descriptions of MOON. He showed nothing short of unstaggering patriotism throughout our interview. The way he described this town, it was other-wordly! I asked him if he considered returning to Spring Break Immersion next year, to which he responded, “They’ve already got me booked! I’m scheduled for these training sessions. My trip to MOON was awesome. When I got back home, everyone cheered and cried. People, who told me they worked for the government, were smoking and shaking my hand and saying ‘By God, the kid did it!’ I didn’t realize how special this program was to so many people.”
There you have it, Crusaders. Casey’s trip to MOON 2025. What a hero.
Copy Edited by Lily Wasmund ’28
Featured image courtesy of NASA
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