Spring Break
Students Use Break To Aid Katrina Victims
Heather Murdock
Issue date: 1/25/08 Section: News
Most of the buildings on campus were empty, and hardly any footprints crossed the fields of mud outside the library on the unseasonably warm morning of Jan. 8. The only crowd to be found was on Hillside Road, where students carrying pillows and paper coffee cups chatted as they piled into a red-and-white striped charter bus. UConn President Michael Hogan stood outside the bus door and handed out insulated blue lunch bags as they boarded. They were full of travel snacks, and painted with gold letters that read, "Biloxi or Bust!"
The bus drove away at 8:31 a.m., and the small crowd left behind cheered. Inside the bus, more than 50 students and one UConn staffer settled in for a 30-hour drive to Mississippi. The next afternoon, they moved into the Salvation Army Volunteer Village, a high school football stadium converted into a communal living facility.
At 7 a.m. the next morning, they woke up to begin nine days of service, mostly in the form of construction work, to Biloxi, a city still reeling from the destruction of Hurricane Katrina.
"You drive down the street and just see lot, after lot, after lot of nothing - or a foundation, or a pile of bricks," said Joseph Marino, a 7th-semester molecular cell biology major and the trip's director. The hurricane hit the city on Aug. 29, 2005. The effects of Katrina killed 238 Mississippi residents and wracked its coast with waves up to 37 feet high, and 145 mph winds, according to the state's Web site.
Two and a half years later, there is still plenty to do, Marino said.
"You don't see anything on the news and you don't hear anything. But you go down there and you see this. How can it be that the government has stopped talking about it?" It will take another three-to-five years before the effects of the hurricane are no longer a visible in Biloxi, he said.
The cost of rebuilding is also prohibitively high, according to Marino.
"It's expensive because of supply and demand, naturally. The supply of contractors is so small compared to the amount of work that needs to be done."
The bus drove away at 8:31 a.m., and the small crowd left behind cheered. Inside the bus, more than 50 students and one UConn staffer settled in for a 30-hour drive to Mississippi. The next afternoon, they moved into the Salvation Army Volunteer Village, a high school football stadium converted into a communal living facility.
At 7 a.m. the next morning, they woke up to begin nine days of service, mostly in the form of construction work, to Biloxi, a city still reeling from the destruction of Hurricane Katrina.
"You drive down the street and just see lot, after lot, after lot of nothing - or a foundation, or a pile of bricks," said Joseph Marino, a 7th-semester molecular cell biology major and the trip's director. The hurricane hit the city on Aug. 29, 2005. The effects of Katrina killed 238 Mississippi residents and wracked its coast with waves up to 37 feet high, and 145 mph winds, according to the state's Web site.
Two and a half years later, there is still plenty to do, Marino said.
"You don't see anything on the news and you don't hear anything. But you go down there and you see this. How can it be that the government has stopped talking about it?" It will take another three-to-five years before the effects of the hurricane are no longer a visible in Biloxi, he said.
The cost of rebuilding is also prohibitively high, according to Marino.
"It's expensive because of supply and demand, naturally. The supply of contractors is so small compared to the amount of work that needs to be done."
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