Alternative Student Breaks announced Thursday night the sites for this year’s 15 Spring Break service trips.
The lineup includes excursions to a music education facility in Tennessee, a social-service agency in Washington, D.C., and a substance abuse counseling center in Colorado.
In addition ASB, formerly Alternative Spring Break, for the first time is offering a site in Chicago, where students will spend time working in inner-city public schools.
“A lot of people (from other schools) come to Chicago to do ASB, and we have the entire city right here,” said Medill senior Lauren Taiclet, one of ASB’s co-programming directors.
Organizers said they think this will be an especially interesting site because the Chicago Public School District is one of the most studied and criticized districts in the United States. The trip costs $75.
Another new site, the Stax Music Academy in Memphis, Tenn., will allow students to integrate community service and music education.
“This is something different than what most people expect out of ASB,” said Taiclet, a former assistant photo editor for The Daily. “It’s really awesome (that) our trip combines that passion that people have for music with an opportunity to work with kids.”
The Memphis trip costs $170.
Students also can travel to several more traditional sites, including the Gay Men’s Health Center in New York, which is the largest and oldest HIV/AIDS center in the country. Others staples include the two Nature Conservancy sites, one in Virginia and the other in Tennessee.
Nature Conservancy trips offer students opportunities to reconstruct bridges and boardwalks in hurricane-torn areas or to plant and collect seedlings on a wetland restoration project.
Medill sophomore Emily Goligoski, ASB’s campus coordinator, went on a Nature Conservancy trip last year. She said she thinks all students could benefit from taking a service trip.
“I had an amazing experience,” said Goligoski, a Daily staff writer. “(ASB) gives students the opportunity to meet people they wouldn’t have met otherwise, bringing people with diverse interests together.”
ASB hosted an ASB beach party at The Rock on Thursday to celebrate National Alternative Spring Breaks Day and to inform students about the program. Participants and organizers dressed in bikinis, played beach volleyball and danced to music in mid-20-degree weather.
“It takes a certain amount of commitment to be here in the cold doing something most people would see as embarrassing,” said Anand Pillai, one of ASB’s site leader coordinators and a McCormick junior. “But it shows that this matters to so many people.”
This is ASB’s 10th year on campus. When the group began in 1994, it offered only one trip — to restore houses in a rundown Pennsylvania coal-mining town.
“The trips are an amazing way to get out of your element and meet new people both inside and outside the Northwestern community,” said Emily Barker, co-programming director of the group and a Weinberg senior.
Applications are due 5 p.m. Feb. 6 and can be found online at groups.northwestern.edu/asb.
