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The flyer advertising the Disrupt Everything contest. @JPHP_MU / INSTAGRAM

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Sarah Rolka, Staff Writer

On Oct. 9, winners for the “Disrupt Everything and Win” Contest were announced on the James Patterson Honors Program’s (JPHP) Instagram page. The contest allowed both students and staff to be “positive disruptors,” and to come up with a pitch that would fix a certain issue on campus. First place winners receive the chance to implement their pitch on campus. 

First place student winners included Vannesa DiPilato, Seamus Bryne and Paul Harrison with their pitch “Jasper Reset Room.” Second place went to Aine Kolpa with “The Cozy Campus Initiative: Transforming Thomas Hall into a True Community Space.” Third place had a tie between groups including Diya Patel and Brody Cox with a “Patterson Repurpose Club” and David Pozo with an “Interdisciplinary Collaboration Lab: Student-Led Cross-Major Teams Solving Real Campus Challenges.”

The winning group included DiPilato, senior mechanical engineering major, Bryne, junior mechanical engineering major and Harrison, junior electrical engineering major, who all spoke to The Quadrangle about their group’s pitch and the rationale behind it. 

“We did mental health and awareness, so for our final pitch, we decided to make something called the Jasper Reset Room,” DiPilato said. “The idea of the Jasper Reset Room is that we wanted to have a space for residents on campus, starting with Lee Hall. It’ll be for people, whether they’re homesick, they just need a quiet moment away from their roommates or they’re going through something and they need some alone time…just to destress, get their emotions out in a safe way. A lot of freshmen we’ve noticed, they don’t really have a space to themselves. You’re not used to living somewhere different [so] you may not be used to sharing a space with other people. That can be stressful. This room is to have a quiet moment for yourself to regulate how you’re feeling.”

The group also mentioned what sparked their project idea.

“We were in the library one night, and I saw the email about it [the contest],” Bryne said. “So, then we spent around an hour and a half brainstorming ideas and since we’re RAs, we knew something had to be done for the freshman dorms.”

The group mentioned that it felt surreal to win the campus-wide contest, and expressed their gratitude for the opportunity. 

The winners of the staff contest included Deidre O’Leary, Ph.D. and Heidi Laudien, Ph.D., English professors. O’Leary and Laudien wrote in a statement to The Quadrangle about the group’s pitch and what they hope to accomplish with it.

“We pitched a free shop on campus open to all students and employees at MU,” O’Leary and Laudien wrote in an email to The Quadrangle. “Students moving out of the dorms will donate any gently used, no longer needed dorm decor and furniture. Collections will be made on move out day. The Redorm shop will be up and running for the fall of 2026. The average college student disposes of approximately 600 lbs of goods per academic year. Our aim was to salvage items and rehouse or “redorm” them. We hope that this initiative will contribute to the culture of sustainability on campus and disrupt notions of resource sharing and consumption. Don’t throw out your junk, redorm it!”

The contest was introduced prior to the “Disrupt Everything and Win” book event on Sept. 29 featuring James Patterson ‘69, and Patrick Leddin, Ph.D. At the event, the two spoke about their recent book together: “Disrupt Everything—and Win.”

Ana McCabe, program manager for JPHP, also spoke to The Quadrangle on the topic of picking the winners. 

“There was myself and two other judges who are both faculty, two deans, Dean Kelly [of KSAS] and the associate dean of the O’Malley School of Business [Grishma Shah],” McCabe said. “All three of us read through each submission and followed the rubric [created by Saracino]…It was a very hard decision since there were a lot of great submissions.”

McCabe continued on to explain that they wanted the selected plans to benefit everyone in the campus community, from residents to commuters, students, staff and faculty. 

“We wanted to make sure they (the winning idea) benefitted both students who reside on campus and the commuters,” McCabe said. “So to try to create more programs that can include everyone is something that we’re really trying to strive for when creating different programs, events, or activities.”

Michele Saracino, Ph.D., is the executive director of JPHP. She spoke to The Quadrangle about the creation of the contest and the “drivers” behind it. 

“First of all, there was James Patterson coming back with his co-author, Patrick Leddin, for the book,” Saracino said. “That is supposed to really enliven someone to take a moment of change or disruption and turn it into something positive. Also the Honors program, when Mr. Patterson and I were talking about it, he wanted students to get involved in contests on campus.”

An interactive contest like this one has the possibility to shape the population of Manhattan University in a ‘positive’ way. Saracino commented on this, explaining that there’s a true passion that comes with investing in the culture at MU.

“I think it brought a little needed excitement, we got more [submissions] than what we expected,” Saracino said. “They were fun, exciting, [and] they were engaging. It shapes the culture of MU because everyone here, whether you’re a student or an employee, has a level of investment. People become more invested when they think about how they can make something better, then they develop a plan. There’s passion behind that, and then you need the perseverance to see it through.”