From Richmond to New Orleans, UR students take up activism

This article was published by the Richmond Times-Dispatch on March 26 2007.

By Michael Paul Williams
Times-Dispatch Staff Writer

While their peers chilled during spring break, 50 University of Richmond students pried up tile floors, pulled insulation from walls and installed ceilings.

While fellow collegians slathered on sunscreen, the UR group ended each day sunburned, dirt-stained and smiling.

The students were part of UR's Collegiate Disaster Relief Team, which spent March 3-11 on a relief mission to flood-ravaged New Orleans.

The team was formed after last year's spring break, when UR students did relief work in Mississippi. They created a handbook, developed a strategic plan and trained future leaders. Wading through 100 applications, the team's leaders selected 40 students to accompany them to New Orleans.

A few more public-service projects such as this, and students will shatter the school's reputation as a hotbed of isolated affluence. From Richmond to the Gulf Coast to Guatemala, UR's undergraduates are embracing activism.

"This is the student movement of our time," said junior Sarah Potter of Lexington, Ky.

In an interview Friday, several students recalled the $25,000 trip, funded with a grant from the Princeton, N.J.-based Bonner Foundation and other donations. Students were given a packet in advance with a post-Hurricane Katrina rebuilding plan, news stories and a paper by Juliette Landphair, dean of UR's Westhampton College, on New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward.

"It was a real service-learning trip, instead of just doing the service," said Amy L. Howard, acting director of The Bonner Center for Civic Engagement at the University of Richmond.

The students slept in a church that had been converted into a bunkhouse. They began each day at 6 a.m. Each night was capped by reflective discussions or team meetings. The group was given guided tours of neighborhoods and met city officials, clergy and community activists.

The team gutted a church next to the home of legendary musician Fats Domino. The church will be rebuilt as a hub for the ward's Neighborhood Empowerment Network Association.

The students had six service sites going each day, painting, tearing down sheds, boarding up abandoned homes, digging up stumps, cutting grass and fixing a church parking lot.

"All these things are so different," said sophomore Christina Moore of Richmond, "but somehow the group would come together." And make connections.

Chandler Whitman, a junior from Memphis, Tenn., said a man who lived in a trailer in the church parking lot gave them orange juice and a bag of Mardi Gras beads. "They love our help, and they want to do as much as they can to show their appreciation."

Katrina's wounds are still evident. Erica Coleman, a junior from Madison, recalled seeing a house with a "0" painted on it -- the supposed number of victims found there. As it turns out, three bodies there had been overlooked by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Potter recalled being told of a mother stranded on a rooftop, having to decide which child to let go. "So many people had to make those types of decisions," she said, tearing up.

But through their experience, the students gained perspective and resolve.

"I really had to take a hard look at the things I complain about," Coleman said. "It's not about me. It's about how I can use the gifts that I have to serve other people."

"I learned that we can make a difference," Potter said.

Critics of their generation love to point to the 1960s as the winter of student activism. But UR's disaster relief team members, by forgoing their break to aid Katrina's victims, offer signs of spring.

Contact staff writer Michael Paul Williams at mwilliams@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6815.

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