By Maggie Biunno

It’s the first day back from spring break and there is the typical bustle in the Student Center. Friends and classmates gather for food in between classes asking eachother, “How was your spring break?”

The anticipated reply is non-stop party stories from Daytona Beach or Acapulco. And while some students opted to spend their vacation at home or on the beach, several University students went beyond the normal spring break vacation criteria and traveled down south to sort through the devastating ruins of Hurricane Katrina that still remain in New Orleans.

With a combined effort of the Student Government Association and Catholic Charities, a relief effort was organized and on April 6, students flew down to volunteer.

“To be honest, we did not expect it to be that bad,” Rich Vizziello, a senior finance major, said. “We were actually a little nervous there wouldn’t be work to do.”

However, to their surprise, when they arrived in the city that had once been enriched with history, they discovered it was still washed away and a chaotic mess. While the news focused on the disaster in the French Quarter of New Orleans, the media seemed to avoid places such as the Lower Ninth Ward, which had been hit much harder with the levees breaking just 30 feet away from homes, Joe Bruno, advisor of the Newman Club and trip coordinator, said.

“It was right in the path of one of the three levy breaks,” he added. “Houses [were] literally ripped off their foundation.”

Other volunteers agreed it seemed that not much had been done in relief efforts in the months since Katrina hit.

“The neighborhoods we toured were still filled with destroyed furnishings,” Chris DeBono, a senior mathematics major, said. “Whole neighborhoods of like 500 houses were completely untouched since the disaster. The few fortunate families removed their belongings and began gutting the houses, but most were left virtually untouched since the storm.”

“It was like my own house, the car still parked in the driveway,” Vizziello said. “They basically left everything. It’s sick. The government isn’t doing anything. It doesn’t take much to go in there and knock everything down.”

The University students that went to New Orleans gutted two houses belonging to two elderly women during their trip. Working in groups of 10, the students removed everything within the homes, gutted sheet rock, ripped down ceilings and removed tiles. All efforts were in hopes of preparing the homes for reconstruction.

“The house itself was unlike anything I had ever seen,” Megan Ciccarello, a sophomore education major, said. “The owner hadn’t been inside since the hurricane occurred in the end of August, so everything was still very damp and the entire house was covered in mold.”

In most cases, it costs about $15,000 to gut a house affected by Hurricane Katrina, Vizziello explained.

However, with the help of Catholic Charities and volunteers, families that cannot afford this price are located and helped. The only help that programs such as FEMA gives is to take away the trash after gutting is complete, but they do not aide in any actual clean-up.

“The people in New Orleans are so thankful,” Vizziello said, referring to incidents of restaurants refusing to take money for meals when the group of more than 20 volunteers went out to eat. “They lost everything and now they won’t even take our money.”

With little being done to help those eager to rebuild in New Orleans, residents were continuously grateful to the University students.

“Everyone I spoke to about what we were doing in New Orleans was extremely appreciative,” Ciccarello said. “They were very touched that we wanted to spend our break helping them rebuild and they really welcomed us to their city.”

Since their return, group members have made it a point to spread the word.

“When I came back, I told everyone to go there and see it,” Vizziello said, adding that going to physically help the people of New Orleans was more valuable than any amount of money he could give the victims.

DeBono agreed, stating the best way to help the situation is to actually offer your time and labor. “People donate money and I think money is helpful,” he said. “However, money by itself won’t rebuild the city. People are needed. Although I can not afford to fly back down there and assist, clean up effort is still needed in my hometown in Virginia three years after the devastating hurricane there. The donations stop after a time, but the clean up effort takes years.”

There was no way to compare New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit to its previous cultural atmosphere, said Liz Schmermund, a junior English and creative writing major. Schmermund had visited New Orleans just a year before the hurricane and could not believe the destruction. With the exception of the French Quarter, so much had changed.

“It looked like a war zone,” she said. “It didn’t look like New Orleans. It didn’t even compare and I wouldn’t have even recognized it.”

Schmermund devoted time last summer to helping students in Costa Rica, but her New Orleans experience had a deeper effect.

“The devastation was incredible in New Orleans,” she said. “I didn’t think it was going to be half as bad as what I saw. The media has not been covering it and everyone has assumed that it happened and that it was fixed up since it wasn’t being covered anymore.”

But the substantial amount of work that was left did not lower the spirits of the volunteers. “Everyone was selfless,” Terrence Jennings Jr., a senior accounting and marketing major, said, adding that while not all of students had the experience in the labor they took part of in New Orleans, everyone pulled together to work through grueling eight-hour days. “Everyone sacrificed themselves and worked together well.”

With some extra time taken to tour the remains of New Orleans, the students remained dedicated to their hard work for the four consecutive days they labored for the victims.

After three days working at the houses, the students took another day to help at Brother Martin High School.

“Spirits were high,” Bruno said. “However, I think many of the students became angry or frustrated at what they saw, given that it was eight months after the fact. So the challenge was to get students to turn that frustration into productivity.”

While the circumstances were grim, the students left the disaster site of Hurricane Katrina with much more than when they arrived.

“It was the trip of a lifetime, unfortunately it had to happen,” Vizziello said. “It opens your eyes to the real world because it’s not perfect.”

“I learned that some things are more important in life then material possessions,” DeBono said. “Whether a family had a vintage Corvette or a rusty old car, the storm left them both with nothing.”