When Hurricane Katrina hit the gulf coast region last year, Carleton responded by organizing a service trip, asking for students to volunteer two weeks of their winter break to support reconstruction efforts in Biloxi, Mississippi and New Orleans, Louisiana. 19 Carls answered the call, and, together with economics professor Michael Hemeseth, they mucked, gutted and blogged their way through the warm winter.
This year, Carleton renewed its commitment to Katrina victims with a second winter break service trip. A total of 43 students and three staff members—Professor Hemesath, Gerald Krause and Wendy Nordquist—volunteered for the trip. Unlike last year, in which the entire group traveled to both Biloxi and New Orleans, this year’s volunteers were divided into two groups, each working exclusively in one city.
Professor Hemesath, who has organized the trip both years, explained that this year’s trip had three purposes:
- Physical work. Cleaning and rebuilding efforts in both cities are nowhere close to finished, and volunteers are responsible for much of the progress that has been made. They need all of the hands that they can find.
- An educational opportunity for students. The trip allowed students to see the gulf coast region for themselves, forge positive relationships with the cities’ residents and fellow volunteers, and attempt to understand the current social and political climate
- “Send a signal that the rest of the country hasn’t forgotten” about the hurricane victims. Many residents fear that since hurricane-related stories have faded from the daily news cycle, they will be completely forgotten. The physical presence of the Carleton group shows that the hurricane victims are still present in the American conscious, and this idea is especially reinforced by the fact that Carleton students volunteered in the region last year as well.
In New Orleans, students lodged in a Catholic school-turned-volunteer center run by the Common Ground Collective. The Church is located in the 9th Ward, which, despite being the highest ground in New Orleans, experienced catastrophic flooding after multiple levees surrounding it broke. Most of the work there involved gutting hurricane-ravaged houses so that new ones could be built in their place. The physical labor was really difficult and intense, and on top of that the working conditions were less-than-optimal. To guard against the threat of mold, students had to use respirators with filters, and sometimes even needed HAZMAT suits for protection.
Students did more than just clean, however. The first day of the trip, for example, they visited the French Quarter and Jackson Square. On the third day, they witnessed a protest outside of the Algiers Courthouse by members of the Woodlands Apartment Complex. The Woodlands Complex is a public housing complex that residents have been forced to evacuate by January 4, since the building is scheduled to be knocked down for private business. Since housings costs have gone up as much as 70% since Katrina, these residents are requesting government assistance in finding new housing. One night, the group had a lively meeting discussing race and its role in the Katrina reconstruction efforts.
In Biloxi, instead of gutting houses, students were building them. The group put the finishing touches on a house that was already underway, cleaning, painting, caulking, trimming, and installing cabinets. They slept on the floor of a Lutheran church and ate community meals. Again, the education was not just in the reconstruction. Besides building the house, they heard a moving speech from a pastor’s wife, and watched a film about the hurricane.
All of the students who went on the service trip are meeting again in early January to discuss ways to educate the entire Carleton community about their experience. If you have any questions about the trip, feel free to contact Mike Hemesath at mhemesat@carleton.edu. Also, if you were on the trip, you can use the comment feature to comment about any aspect of the trip you would like.