Some local college students make sacrifices, not revelry

Not every college student is headed south looking for fun in the sun.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Spring break -- a time that some would have you believe is set aside for college students to head for Southern beaches for a week of drunken revelry.
There's no doubt that time off from classes will bring that scenario for many, and those are the ones who will probably be seen on the nightly newscasts as the national television networks offer their annual spring break story.
But there are groups of college students who are engaged in more meaningful and purposeful pursuits during spring break. Plenty of them attend schools in this region.
For example, 16 students at Youngstown State University are headed to Jacksonville, Fla., this weekend for a weeklong stint of house building with Habitat for Humanity. That effort is arranged by the Catholic Campus Ministry at YSU.
The same organization sent a group to Florida last year to build a house in a week. The campus ministry students will be accompanied by two advisers.
Long Beach, Miss.
An additional five upperclassmen from YSU will travel on their own, but under the auspices of the University Scholars program, to help rebuild homes in Long Beach, Miss., that were damaged by Hurricane Katrina last year.
They will spend a week on that task, working under the direction of a church in the Long Beach area.
Across the border in Pennsylvania, 75 students from Slippery Rock University are on their way to seven cities across the country to help with a variety of projects.
They are all part of the university's Institute for Community, Service-Learning and Nonprofit Leadership program, which offers student volunteers a "Spring Care Break" opportunity every year working with established service agencies in host cities.
More than 900 Slippery Rock students have participated during the program's 17-year history, logging more than 135,000 volunteer hours.
This year, some of the 75 are going to New Orleans to help with disaster relief after Hurricane Katrina.
Others are going to Atlanta to work with schoolchildren and to serve the homeless and HIV-positive population; some are headed to Houston to work with a food bank and the Salvation Army on hurricane relief; and some will be doing service project work in San Francisco, East St. Louis, Chicago and Las Vegas.
Westminster helpers
About 30 students, faculty and staff members from Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pa., will be rebuilding homes in hurricane-ravaged Pearlington, Miss. They left on the 20-hour drive Friday night.
The group will be housed in a tent village equipped with cots and portable showers. In addition to helping clean up the area, the group will have to cook its own food in the dining tents.
"Pearlington is very rural and has just recently received its first volunteers," said the Rev. James Mohr, Westminster College chaplain. "It's close to the Louisiana border, not far from the coast, and roughly 30 minutes from New Orleans."
"Though the news coverage has returned to normal, the lives of those in Mississippi are still far from normal," said Zak Lantz, resident director at Westminster.
The Rev. Mr. Mohr and Lantz are among the administrators accompanying the students.
gwin@vindy.com