Photo by Pat Christman
Matthew Peterson (left) and Vesna Champagne are among the 35 Minnesota State University students who will spend their spring breaks doing disaster relief in the New Orleans area.
MANKATO — Come spring break time, a group of 35 or so Minnesota State University students will hop on a bus and head south for a spring break trip they'll likely never forget.
But they won't be carousing in Cancun, frolicking in Fort Lauderdale or partying in South Padre. Instead their destination, while it may have a history of late-night fun and debauchery, is a place still very much in recovery after what was perhaps the worst natural disaster in our nation's history.
The New Orleans area, which was hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina, will open its arms to thousands of college students this year during spring break, including a group from Minnesota State University.
The group, led by graduate student Matthew Peterson, will leave Mankato March 11 and arrive in St. Bernard's Parish, just southwest of New Orleans, March 12. After that, they'll spend their days working full time on whatever needs to be done and their nights sleeping in a tent city.
Work efforts are being coordinated by Habitat for Humanity. The students are unsure at this point exactly what they'll be doing, but they have a hunch it won't be pleasant.
"They need to clean up the area before they can get to any rebuilding," Peterson says.
The idea to put together a group of students for a spring break trip came about sort of by happenstance. Peterson was giving a talk at a conference about service learning and alternative spring trips, and Ann Swartz — who coordinates a lot of the service learning activities for MSU's Student Leadership Development and Service Learning office — was listening.
She talked to Peterson afterward about organizing an official trip, and eventually the two decided they should focus their efforts on New Orleans. Also, the Louisiana branch of the civic-engagement group Campus Compact has been inviting students to come to New Orleans during spring break to help with cleanup. Thousands are expected.
Peterson held an initial informational meeting last semester that attracted about 10 students. One of them was Vesna Champagne, a junior from Milwaukee. She said she's never done a service learning project of this magnitude before.
"I thought this would be a good way to impact people in a positive way," Champagne said. "It was a matter of doing this or staying home. I just figured why not?"
After that first meeting, they weren't able to hold another until the beginning of spring semester in January. They held weekly meetings ever since, and the contingent has grown to about 35 students and a handful of faculty and staff. Each student has to pay $100 to attend, and the group as a whole still needs to raise more than $1,000 to make the trip happen.
Peterson, who is making the trip part of his master's degree program, has students write journal entries at each meeting, which they'll continue each day in New Orleans. Peterson also intends to shoot video footage and create a documentary film of the group's experience.
As a kid, Peterson's family lived on the Gulf Coast for a while. So when he saw the television footage of the aftermath, it was painful to watch.
"I saw what it looked like and I said, 'I have to do something,'" he said.Champagne remembers how she felt, too. And when she thinks about what she saw, the crying children, the elderly and the ill in dire need of help, she tears up a little.
"That really spoke to me," she said. "I can't forget that."
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