Harvard Students Go Marching In to New Orleans

Teams of Harvard students are flocking down to the Gulf Coast this spring break in University-wide efforts to rebuild communities devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

[Follow their progress throughout the break as a Crimson reporter blogs live from the Big Easy.]

Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA) annually sends students on community service trips billed as alternative spring breaks, but this year PBHA will also send four teams of students to the Gulf Coast.

“This is the first time there has been a focus with groups going to the same place,” said Gene A. Corbin, the executive director of PBHA.

After sending students to the beleaguered area over intersession, PBHA is now sending over 70 students to New Orleans and Mississippi.

Team leader Amara A. Omeokwe ’08 said that they were returning to the region because it remains in shambles.

PBHA participants traveling to New Orleans will help bring order to two local schools, O’Perry Walker High School and Benjamin Franklin Elementary School.

And a third team will visit the historically black Dillard College, where volunteers will make a documentary about what the students have faced over the past year, Omeokwe said.

“We have so many resources [at Harvard] and so many great thinkers here,” she said.

Two teams of Lowell and Mather House students, affiliated with both PBHA and Habitat for Humanity, will clean debris in New Orleans while building houses and house spirit, alike.

The 10 Lowell students will work in Musicians’ Village—an area set up by Harry Connick, Jr. to preserve the musical culture of the Big Easy.

“We obviously aren’t going to be able to build a whole bunch of houses in a short week,” said Kaartiga Sivanesan ’06, a co-leader of the trip. “We can benefit from this experience and help spread knowledge about what is going on there.”

Each of the PBHA teams have compiled packets of newspaper articles and personal stories to educate the participants about the effects of the hurricane.

Harvard Radcliffe Christian Fellowship (HRCF) is sponsoring a trip of 53 students to Bay Saint Louis, Miss.

HRCF members said that the trip’s goals reach beyond just physical rebuilding, according to Denise J. Rosetti ’02, one of the trip’s leaders.

“The secondary goal is not just to do the service but to actually dig a little deeper into the issues that were revealed by the hurricane,” she said.

Tin-Yun T. Ho ’07 said that he will be going down to the Gulf Coast with HRCF for personal reasons.

“The first time I saw images coming out of New Orleans, I felt shame. ‘Why are all these people minorities?’” Ho said. “I didn’t expect that.”

“There is something about me that wants to be a witness to the tragedy that has happened and just to be a witness to the nation’s shame,” he added.

In addition to the College, several Harvard graduate schools are leading spring break relief efforts.

Doug Ahlers, a Kennedy School of Government (KSG) fellow, is leading a group down to Broadmoor, a neighborhood in New Orelans, to help with urban revitalization plans, according to trip volunteer Rakhi Bhavnani.

Unlike other organizations that will build homes or clear debris, the KSG trip will be working with the Broadmoor neighborhood association to prevent the demolition of the community, she said.

The Harvard Divinity School, the Catholic Students Association, Habitat for Humanity, and students Taking on Poverty (STOP) will also be leading spring break service trips to the Gulf Coast.

—Staff writer Madeline W. Lissner can be reached at mlissner@fas.harvard.edu.