College students spend 'vacation' volunteering
Forget Cancun. Don't even think about Fort Lauderdale. The hot spring break spots for dozens of north country college students were in lesser known, unheralded locations.
And the uniform of the day wasn't bikinis and surfer shorts — it was boots and work jeans.
Groups from SUNY Canton and St. Lawrence University, Canton, drove hundreds of miles to work with chapters of Habitat for Humanity. Students from Clarkson University, Potsdam, went to Virginia to get a state park ready to open, and students from SLU and SUNY Potsdam volunteered at soup kitchens.
"I think everybody sees, especially at this time, college kids are all about themselves. It's not true," said John M. Shumway, a counselor at Clarkson who helped set up his group's trip. "They're less involved with being cool and more about the job. It's not about pretense, it's about what's real."
Along the Appalachian Trail in Virginia, a group of Clarkson students worked to clean up debris and rebuild trails to prepare for the reopening of Douthat State Park in early April. It was the first time Clarkson has sponsored a community service spring break trip, but it will not be the last, Mr. Shumway said. The college is considering beginning a "stay-at-home" spring break, when students help St. Lawrence County residents with things like yard work and house painting.
"They're on their way back and they just had a tremendous time. They said they've never laughed so hard in their lives," he said. "They seemed surprised that they had so much fun, if not more fun than they expected."
Other area colleges have been doing what they call "alternative" spring break trips for years, though the destinations vary every year.
SUNY Canton students traveled to Lebanon, Pa., to demolish a burned-out 1860s row house so it could be rebuilt for another family. William J. Fassinger, assistant professor of criminal investigation and board member of Raquette Valley Habitat for Humanity, brought 12 students down during the college's midwinter break.
"They attacked every project like 'This is mine, I'm going to be living here,'" he said. "It was an eclectic mix. I had kids in criminal justice, vet tech, in the Canino School of Engineering. I think I had some business students."
In one week, they filled a 30-cubic-yard trash container three times, took down two stories of the house and demolished four chimneys, Mr. Fassinger said.
St. Lawrence University had two community service spring break trips; one was with Habitat for Humanity in Tazewell, Tenn., and the other group went to the St. Francis Inn, a Franciscan living and working community in inner city Philadelphia.
"I think it was eye-opening for a lot of them," said Joseph E. Tebo, an SLU bookstore employee who took nine students to the Inn. "Hopefully they can take what they learned and bring it back here. They've started the campus kitchen where they take the extra food from the dining halls already. I know one of the students has already checked out the church dinner on Wednesday. They're very proactive about checking out the local situation."
Across all of the programs, the students seemed to enjoy the hard work, no matter how dirty they got or how tired they were at the end of the day, according to university staff members who were involved in the trips.
"They busted their tails," said Mr. Fassinger, who says the soot stains still have not come out of his work pants. "I had kids that I took last year and they knew the deal. I had other students who had never been and they totally embraced what it means — working their tails off."
