There and back again
University organizes second relief trip to New Orleans this spring
By Kelly Conniff, staff writer
Posted on February 5, 2007

JMU students are getting ready to go back to New Orleans.

The first JMU Alternative Spring Break-sponsored relief trip to New Orleans was held during Thanksgiving Break, students and faculty will return to the Big Easy to aid in the Katrina cleanup from May 6 to 13.

“For the first trip, we spent the time gutting houses and trying to get rid of the mess left over,” said Heather Roberts, the administrator in Career and Academic Planning who leads the May group. “It was very neat to go back to Mississippi several months later and see some reconstruction happening and it’s nice to see development.”

Some students believe people have forgotten about Hurricane Katrina directly following the storms, but students like junior Lauren Caskey are looking to change that.

“They forgot about it a month after the fact, less and less in the media,” she said. Caskey participated in an earlier trip and is a small group leader this time around.

During previous trips, the group used different agencies to coordinate trips, such as the National Relief Network. This time, the group is working with Habitat for Humanity at the St. Bernard Recovery in New Orleans, one of the most devastated parishes in the city. 

Previously, groups were primarily involved in the gutting of completely unsalvageable houses, and this time, the group hopes that they will be more involved in actual reconstruction.

“You have to be super flexible, because you never know what you’ll be doing,” Roberts said. “On other trips we’ve served food, given out free clothes, canvassed neighborhoods, picked up trash, and even proctored SAT tests for students in the area.”

The program is utilizing a unique “pay-it-forward” system, in which each fund-raising period is paying for the next trip.

“We promised we’d come back, until the work is done,” Caskey said. “It’s something we have a lot of passion for, and a lot of people are really benefiting from this experience at JMU.”

Part of this sustainability is making the trip cost the same for everyone going.

“This year our students are going to raise money to help sustain next year’s program,” Roberts said. “Because of this we’re able to make the price a flat rate, $250 for everybody, no matter what.”

In order to sign up, students can enter a lottery on the ASB Web site on Monday and Tuesday. Students will be informed within the week. The lottery system was necessary because of the anticipated response to the trip.

“We think there might be more participants than we have spots to offer, because we have 56 spots on the bus, leaving 42 to 43 available spots for students and volunteers,” Caskey said.