Many Black Students Put Off Spring Break Partying to Help Rebuild Gulf
Black America Web.com, News Report, Monica Lewis, Posted: Mar 09, 2006
Each year when the calendar turns to March, it’s tradition for college students across the country to ditch the rigors of school for the rest, relaxation and often raucous rite known as Spring Break.
However, this year many students are choosing not to indulge in the week of fun and sun, but are instead looking to roll up their sleeves and work to repair the Gulf Coast region still reeling from Hurricane Katrina. It’s been over six months since the devastating storm took its toll on parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and some coeds have determined have their Spring Break could be better spent there than on a sandy beach.
Nicole Davis, a senior from Southern University at Baton Rouge, said Southern students would regularly go to New Orleans for recreation prior to Katrina. But since the hurricane, Davis said she and others have shied away. But next week, as the school closes for spring recess, she’ll be in New Orleans to see what help she can be.
“I feel like I’ve been putting it off for too long, and I just need to go down and see what has happened,” Davis told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “Spring Break is my perfect opportunity to do something. If you just think about the money you save and spend for Spring Break; you can use that to go down and donate your time to help clean up or rebuild a house.”
Davis said she and some of her Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority sisters are going to New Orleans together, while Southern University's student government association is also planning a relief group. Other students, like Maurice Kuykendoll, a sophomore at Hampton University, is participating in a project spearheaded by The Impact Movement, a national black Christian organization based in Orlando. The Impact Movement is taking 500 students to New Orleans in hopes of helping and healing Katrina survivors.
Kuykendoll has always enjoyed performing community service, but this project has an extra special meaning, he said.
“Most people in America, especially black America, looked to see what the government was doing or not doing when the tragedy happened,” Kuykendoll told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “But it’s our responsibility as individuals to help those who are in need of our help.”
Having visited to New Orleans on several occasions, Kuykendoll said he’s well aware that the city is a far cry from what it used to be. And even if he wasn’t clear about the perilous situation facing many Katrina survivors, the list of things he needed to do and items he needed to bring with him was enough to drive the point home.
“We have to bring face masks and gloves and had to have tetanus shots before we could be cleared,” Kuykendoll said. “It just blew my mind, so I don’t know if there’s anything I can possibly do to prepare myself for what I’m going to see. All I can do is just pray and hope that everything will be okay.”
Kuykendoll, who departs for New Orleans Thursday with six fellow Hampton students, said he doesn’t know what to expect when he arrives in the battered Big Easy, but he is sure about what he hopes to get out of the experience.
“I just believe that there’s always a reward when you help other people, and what I hope to gain is a new perspective on my life and how I live,” Kuykendoll said. “I’ve seen pictures of people who are still managing to smile, and they don’t have anything.”
Davis agreed, adding that she knows the work will be an eye-opening experience for anyone who participates.
“I think I’m going to value more of what I have,” said Davis, whose fiance’s family lost their home due to the torrential rains and heavy winds of Katrina. And with many Southern students hailing from New Orleans, Davis knows hearts are still heavy.
“It takes for you to actually have lost a person, a car or home to understand what these people have gone through,” she said.
Tony Arnold, a spokesman for Campus Crusade for Christ, one of the nation’s largest collegiate interdenominational organizations, said today’s college students are genuinely concerned about the state of post-Katrina New Orleans and its surrounding areas. In the months after Katrina hit, Campus Crusade for Christ coordinated approximately 4,000 students to go to the areas affected by Katrina. Those numbers have jumped drastically as more students see Spring Break as an optimal time to lend a hand.
“There are many students who, over the last six months, have watched the news cameras over and over again and have been reminded of the devastation in the Gulf Coast. It gets their attention, and they want to do something,” Arnold told BlackAmericaWeb.com, adding that upwards of 8,000 students have been mobilized to go to New Orleans over the next few weeks as part of Campus Crusade for Christ’s Katrina relief efforts.
Arnold believes that each student will walk away with the same outlook.
“Obviously, the number-one concern is that we make a difference in the lives of Katrina survivors. But for the average college student, when they get down there and see the devastation, they see it ain’t a video game. It’s real life and it’s (the survivors’) world,” Arnold said.
“They’ve carried mud out of somebody’s house and brought our remnants of photos or childhood toys,” Arnold said, reflecting on one student who was touched to hear a Katrina survivor say he was just happy to be alive.
“(The experience) really brings home a distinction between what’s important and what’s not,” Arnold said. “It shows what we should really put value in.”
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