On spring break, some break from the norm
The nightclubs and hotels in Cancun and Key West have lost out on a bit of their spring-break income recently, as some college students have begun trading hangovers and suntans for public service tours and projects.
As part of what college officials are calling a growing trend, many students are opting for university-sponsored trips during spring hiatus to work with -- and learn from -- the needy.
Last month, Boston College senior Stephanie Valencia joined the group Campus Ministry on a Nicaraguan trip. ''It is often really easy to go to Boston College, live in the United States and go our entire lives being able to not think about the plight of the poor in other countries," she said. ''I think the main purpose of this trip is to have students see the life of others. That will change their perspective of how we live our lives here."
Valencia, 21, met with all sorts of Nicaraguans -- economists, former guerilla leaders, startup sewing cooperative organizers, and Catholic clergy. She spent time in the countryside in a community attacked four times during the Contra war.
Her group also visited former banana farmers suffering the residual health effects of chemicals widely used on their crops during the 1970s and 1980s, including sterility, miscarriages, and various forms of cancer.
Valencia, who is from Las Cruces, N.M., said the Nicaraguans she met continually said ''how much they appreciated our listening to their stories . . . and coming back and sharing them with our friends and family."
The Nicaraguan trip is one of many BC offers during winter, spring, and summer breaks. Others send students to build homes, teach English, or organize summer camps in places like El Salvador, Mexico, Belize, Haiti, Ghana, Mozambique, Cape Verde, and Brazil. BC's largest public service program sends around 600 students to Appalachia to build homes and offer educational help.
Across the Charles at Harvard, the campus service center Phillips Brooks House has seen interest in its ''Alternative Spring Break" program double in recent years.
This year, one of the many alternatives to flying south to the Bahamas was to drive to the Deep South and rebuild a historic black church that was burned down by arsonists seven years ago. With its all-black, Southern Baptist congregation, Union Grove Baptist Church is in the small town of Opelika, Ala. The church, built by African-American slaves 142 years ago, was razed in 1997.
The restoration effort broke ground last year. Dozens of Harvard students have joined in sheet-rocking, dry-walling, and hanging doors.
''It's a peppy crowd," said Harvard junior Deborah Harrison, 20, in a phone interview from Opelika. ''They keep telling us, 'You could have gone to Panama City, but you're here instead.' But we're actually really glad to be here."
The black church restoration program was initiated independently seven years ago by Tim McCarthy, formerly a lecturer at Harvard and now a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of the American South at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
''When I was in college, I never for one minute contemplated doing something like this for my spring break," said McCarthy, 32, who still attends a trip each spring. ''For all of them to give up this week is so remarkably different from what their peers are doing. It's a tribute to the their character and their heart. They have inspired me."
The programs at Phillips Brooks House, which the university funds, are so popular that there is an application process to participate. Other trips this year had students preparing and delivering meals to AIDS patients in New York City, rebuilding homes in South Carolina, and immersing themselves in rural life in Decatur, Ala. -- all a far cry from a plush Caribbean beach resort.
But as Harrison noted, it was 84 degrees and sunny in Opelika. ''It's hot. It's beautiful. We're going to tan anyway!"
