Despite a cold Winter Quarter, about 250 Northwestern students shunned the beaches of Cancun last week and instead worked to cure the world’s ills.
Students traveled to 18 sites in the United States and Canada as members of Alternative Spring Break, a national organization that sends students to sites around the country during winter and spring vacations.
Instead of working on their tans this Spring Break, students at ASB sites worked to address a variety of causes, including urban and rural poverty, HIV/AIDS, environmental issues, American Indian issues and urban violence, said Kathy Chan, co-programming director for ASB.
Participants paid $200 to $500 for transportation, lodging and other associated costs on the trips. The ASB executive board coordinated fund-raising efforts throughout the year to cover the difference between what students paid and actual costs.
Chan, a Weinberg senior, said about two-thirds of the sites students volunteered at were new this year.
For the third year, ASB also sponsored a student-run seminar Winter Quarter in preparation for a Spring Break trip. This year ASB Special Projects Coordinators Natalie Moore and Genevieve Maricle taught the pass-fail class “Visions, Values, Vouchers: the Perpetual Debate Over Public Education.”
“The point of the class was to generate awareness about public education, and the structure of the class really made that possible,” Moore said. “I think it provided an atmosphere that was very conducive to discussions.”
Speech sophomore Patty West said she took the class because she was interested in educational reform and the state of public schools today.
“It wasn’t a lot of work, but I definitely worked harder in that class than in my others because we were all interested in the class and motivated each other,” she said.
Students enrolled in the class read about four articles per week on such education issues as home schooling and school vouchers. They also wrote midterm papers and made final presentations on education issues.
During Spring Break, the 11 students in the class and two student teachers traveled to a public middle school in Boston where they helped teach a class.
West taught a sixth-grade accelerated class in English and science. She said she observed an overwhelming number of problems with public schools, including a lack of discipline, basic supplies, and communication between administrators and teachers.
West said the gravity of the problems affected her when one NU student asked the children to describe their ideal school if money was no object.
“Students said they wanted basic things like clean bathrooms and supplies,” West said.
She said she also was shocked that they requested sexual education classes, lamaze classes and day-care centers.
West said the trip was life-changing for her and her group.
“The trip totally changed what I want to do with my life and how I see the world,” West said. “Everyone in our group has realized that they want to change what they are doing in school and lean toward doing something that would help people.”
Weinberg junior Nicole Beck traveled to a new site in Puget Sound, Wash., for nine days to do prairie restoration work for the Washington Nature Conservancy.
Beck said invasive species – those that are foreign to an environment – are destroying prairies across the country.
“Invasive species are becoming more and more prevalent, from plants taking over habitats to animals destroying them,” Beck said. “It’s costing a lot of money to control them; prairies are being destroyed at an obscene rate.”
She worked pulling weeds, planting flowers and conducting controlled burning of the prairie.
“The trip had a lot to offer because you can see and work with conservation at a hands-on level,” Beck said.
