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Credit: Courtesy of Tara Shick
Don Heilman, left, director of judicial
affairs at Cook College; Douglass
College sophomore Tara Shick; and
Edward Levy, associate dean of students
at Cook College, stand in front of a
pile of rubble, the remains of destroyed
homes in Chalmette, La., one of the
cities devastated by Hurricane Katrina
last August. The trio was part of an
84-member delegation, coordinated by
Cook College staff, who traveled to St.
Bernard Parish during spring break this
year. The volunteer group cleaned out
flooded homes and helped Gulf Coast
residents prepare to rebuild. In all,
nearly 160 students from Rutgers spent
spring break in various cities along the
Gulf Coast.
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Credit: Courtesy of Tara Shick
“I was collecting photos for a slide
show and I found this picture,” said
Tara Shick, a Douglass College sophomore
who went to Chalmette, La., with the
Cook College group. “I thought that [the
photo] pretty much sums up our trip.
Even though our country’s divided
politically, I think that picture shows
that no matter what, we are all
Americans and we’re all ready to help
each other.”
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Credit: Courtesy of Tara Shick
Nearly all of Chalmette was under water
for more than a week after Hurricane
Katrina struck. Shick spent every day
during spring break gutting homes that
were structurally sound but thoroughly
damaged by floodwater. Volunteers made
sure to separate cherished belongings
from the rest of the trash. “We worked
on a house owned by a family for three
generations. One of the grandchildren,
who is now 22, came to the house and
said his varsity jacket was in the back
closet,” Shick said. “I turned to my
friend and said ‘Let’s suit up and get
that jacket.’ His face lit up when he
saw it.”
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Credit: Courtesy of Bridget Coyne
Student volunteers found warm greetings
from residents as they explored New
Orleans’ distinct neighborhoods, said
Bridget Coyne, left, a second-year
student at the School of Law-Camden. A
60-year-old man named Cedric left a
strong impression on Coyne. He had been
evicted from a hotel the day they met on
Canal Street downtown. “He was out on
the street with everything he owned. He
didn’t know what he was going to do or
where he was going to go next,” Coyne
said. “He had been working at [the
casino] Harrah’s for six years. He’s
back here trying to work at his old job,
trying to get a place for him and his
wife so she can come home. She is living
in Texas, where she was displaced after
the storm. He didn’t want his wife to
know he was homeless. But things are
just way too expensive; the cost of
living has risen exponentially.”
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Credit: Courtesy of Tara Shick
The students had to come up with
creative ways to survive the heat and
the stench of a six-month-old disaster
zone. “We put VapoRub underneath our
noses to try to mask the smell,” Shick
said. “In one house, the refrigerator
fell over – there was six-month-old food
in the middle of the house. Mold was
everywhere. ... The bathrooms were
probably the worst because of the
floodwater pooled in the toilet and the
tubs.” Most surprising to many students
was that household items were still
soaking wet. “There was no water on the
floor, but everything was saturated.
You’d think it would have dried out a
bit, but not at all,” Shick said. “It
took our entire team to pick up a rug,
because it was so saturated.”
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Credit: Courtesy of Bridget Coyne
Coyne said that few schools in the Lower
Ninth Ward have reopened since the
storm. “Residents were very upset about
this because they have no place to send
their kids to school, unless they pay
for private school,” Coyne said. So
community residents, educators and
activists asked volunteers to help them
clean and gut a local school, a
relatively young building that suffered
little structural damage. In an act of
civil disobedience, Coyne said people
broke into the school to start cleaning
it out. A peaceful demonstration went on
outside, and Coyne acted as a legal
observer, working with the Student
Hurricane Network. Authorities from the
New Orleans Police Department, FEMA and
Homeland Security looked on. “They
didn’t bother us the first day because
there were so many reporters there. It
was exciting. It was a lot of positive
energy,” Coyne said. “The second day,
when there was not as much media
attention, FEMA came and had the police
department close the school. They said
that if anyone came in, we would be
arrested for trespassing and looting,”
Coyne said. “This was pretty funny
because the only thing to loot was mud
and destroyed books.”
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This spring break, scores of students headed to the coast – the Gulf Coast. Eschewing the tradition of tanning by day and partying by night, groups of students from Rutgers went to Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas to help victims of Hurricane Katrina rebuild their homes and their lives. Cook College coordinated a group of more than 80 students, faculty and staff who spent the week cleaning out flooded homes. Other students from Rutgers’ law schools in Camden and Newark traveled to the coast to help victims with legal representation. More than 70 students traveled to the Gulf with New Jersey Community Water Watch.
Residents welcomed the student volunteers with open arms. Whether their accommodations were a camp of pitched tents or a gutted Catholic school, the students worked long days and spent nights making friends and talking about the images they saw during the break.
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