The start of fall classes is typically one of the busiest times of the year on campus. This year, calendars bowed to the unpredictable forces of nature in the southeastern U.S.
Pensacola-based Campus Staff Worker Bill De Pury ducked Ivan by driving his family east to Gainesville, where his mom lives. He returned home a couple of days later to find debris filling his yard and trees down all over. “But none hit my home,” he said.
Life slowed to a simpler pace for the De Pury family until electricity returned the following week. “I found myself trying to make sure we got everything done by the time the sun went down,” he said.
In the midst of his own clean-up, and helping friends whose homes sustained much worse damage, he also tried to maintain contact with students who had scattered back to their own homes all over the region. He especially wanted to encourage new students to attend the Jubilee Conference, coming up in Jackson Mississippi the first weekend of October. But now classes won’t resume at the University of West Florida until at least Monday, October 4th. University officials say 95% of campus buildings were damaged. “The hurricane has greatly affected our ability to recruit for this conference,” he said.
The Sunburst Conference, scheduled in Orlando on October 8-10th, will also feel the repercussions of Hurricanes Charlie, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne. Area Director Evan Keller says planners were hoping for 750 students but have lowered their expectations. “Life is slowly headed back to normal,” he says, “but it did put a wrinkle in NSO [New Student Orientation] plans.”
“We had a good solid week before the hurricane came,” he says, but later events had to be cancelled, including a beach retreat, because their hotel was damaged. Some of the activities of a 24-hour/40-day prayer campaign involving students at schools across Florida also had to be changed for hurricane-related reasons, but the prayer campaign itself continues.
The conditions varied from school to school. At Stetson University in Deland, 65 students came to an event before the hurricane and 63 to an event afterwards. But efforts on other campuses “lost a lot of momentum.” No serious injuries were reported among staff and students. “The disruption of life was the biggest thing,” Evan said. “We were without power for four and a half days.”
InterVarsity sees the college campus as a crucible where lives are shaped for future ministry. But seldom are forces as powerful as hurricanes shaping campus events.
