Thousands of college students have decided to skip the beach and, instead, lend a hand to others during their spring break. Many are heading to the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast region of Louisiana and Mississippi.
Randy White, InterVarsity’s national coordinator of Urban Projects, visited New Orleans this week, meeting with about 80 students from Boston, North Carolina, and Florida who are helping clean up or demolish homes that still look like they did seven months ago after Hurricane Katrina left a wake of destruction.
New Orleans residents who have not moved away welcome the volunteer assistance, but find most helpful a person who will just listen to their painful stories. “You’d think by now victims of Katrina would be tired of telling their stories, but they’re not,” Randy said. “They’ll tell them to anyone who will listen.”
The regeneration that’s taking place is not just benefiting the victims of the hurricane. “Students’ lives are also being changed,” Randy said, as he recalled Kaitlin, a student from Boston University that he talked with after she had mucked out some smelly, still wet, moldy debris.
“I’d like to just destroy the whole house and start over again,” she said. “But as I get into it, I see that the structure is still good. And maybe that’s how God sees the sin in my life. He looks at me and says, ‘I can redeem that, there’s still some good there.’ God sees the potential in me despite the dirty sin.”
Not everyone involved in InterVarsity’s Urban Plunges are InterVarsity students. “The Boston University students did an exceptional job of inviting their friends,” Randy said. Some who joined up for the week did not come from a faith background. “For the first time they’re being introduced to an activist Jesus, who’s engaged in the problems of the world,” he added. All the students have questions about the response of Christians to suffering.
Some ask, “Did God cause this?” But the hurricane revealed the lack of justice that already existed in the lower 9th ward area. A whole section of the city was languishing in despair and ongoing neglect. So we address God’s Shalom [God’s peace and God’s justice]. What’s it like to seek Shalom in your city, or on your campus?
Randy talked with the students about a shooting tragedy that took place one night recently in his own neighborhood. He only found out about it later, because there was a fan in his home that made a lot of noise and drowned out all of the other sounds. He asked students if they had any loud fans covering up the sounds of pain emanating from their campus or their city. “Prior to our move to a neighborhood in need, I’d had a fan on my whole life,” he suggested. “Not knowing about that pain is a lot easier than addressing it. [Katrina Response Urban Plunge Director] Myron Crockett taught that Jesus is someone who was tempted to take the easy road (in Luke 4:1-13). The hard way is a way of service and sacrifice. But it is God’s way.”
Other InterVarsity groups are active in Gulf Coast clean-up and Urban Plunges. Myron Crockett is expecting a total of 300 participants in InterVarsity’s New Orleans Urban Plunge this month. Another 300-400 will come in June. Urban Plunges are also taking places in cities such as Chicago, New York, St. Louis, and Milwaukee. A group from Wesleyan and Yale Universities is spending the week of March 10-18 along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
In recent years InterVarsity has been teaming up with Habitat for Humanity to participate in Habitat’s Collegiate Challenge Spring Break. Alynn Woodson, Habitat’s Collegiate Challenge Manager, says that this year there are 10 InterVarsity groups with 151 participants working with Habitat affiliates in eight states, including a group from the Milwaukee School of Engineering working in Spartanburg, South Carolina and a group from Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island, working in Daytona Beach, Florida.
College students from all over the country have volunteered to come to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast to spend their spring break helping with the clean up. Alynne Woodson says Habitat is expecting 1000 students to work with 11 hurricane affected affiliates. Randy said that he saw lots of other groups at work in New Orleans, and he identified vans from various universities driving around the city. “We are part of a large force that God has mobilized,” he said. InterVarsity’s Urban Plunges are distinct in their focus. “Our objective is to put the Word of God next to the Work of God, to see students’ lives regenerated, in addition to houses and streets, through a cycle of action and reflection.”
