The Norwich Guidon

The Norwich Guidon, student newspaper of Norwich University, is published twice monthly and has won numerous awards for excellence in its class.

Reporters, editors, and managers for The Norwich Guidon are students at the university who work under the guidance of a Communications faculty advisor. Student editors learn electronic pagination using state of the art computer equipment.

If you have any questions or comments about the paper, please contact Professor Ken Bush at kbush@norwich.edu.

NU students volunteer to help in food banks, building homes as alternative spring break

By Dale Mauldin
Norwich Guidon Staff Writer

Partying in the sun, on the sand, and throughout the night is how many college students plan to spend their spring break. This year a few NU students are going to take the path less traveled.

For Javonne Gray that meant an experience that "wasn't necessarily self indulgent."

The 20-year-old sophomore English and political science double major from North Miami Beach, Fla. said she "wanted to do something that was going to affect other people rather than just benefit myself."

Eighteen students and faculty members are going to use their free time during spring break to help less fortunate people, by volunteering their time and effort to different organizations, according to Nicole DiDomenico, director of volunteer services at Norwich University.

"This year we have two alternative spring break trips running concurrently the entire week of spring break," said DiDomenico. "These are alcohol-free trips. Even if people are of age, they are not allowed to drink on these trips."

Students who wished to participate on these trips had to fill out an application and be interviewed. The selection process narrowed the list down to seven students for each trip, according to DiDomenico.

Both Corps and civilian students were chosen to go on these trips. Each was required to pay a $100 deposit to keep their spot on the van. In addition to the deposit, each member of the trip needed to raise another $100 each through fundraising.

"We are doing a calendar raffle," said Gray. Drawings for the raffle will start after spring break with a ticket pulled nearly every single day, with prizes ranging from twenty to one hundred dollars. "The tickets are for $5; you get 30 chances to win," Gray said.

The students will travel to the sites in 15-passenger vans. Transportation, food, lodging and recreational costs are all arranged, and the students are not required to buy anything on their own, according to DiDomenico.

Students who are going on the Baltimore trip will be lead by Colonel Costa, USN, and his wife.

"I'm going to be working in a soup kitchen and possibly mentoring kids," said Jerri-Lynn Harper, an 18-year-old freshman electrical engineering major from Utah.

Students on this trip will spend their days working in Our Daily Bread, a soup kitchen that is funded by the Catholic Charities organization. This will be a new experience for many of the members of this trip.

"I've never done anything like this before," said Bryan Bonatati, a 19-year-old sophomore criminal justice major from Annapolis, MD.

The students will help prepare and serve the food to the people who look to Our Daily Bread as a place for a hot meal.

The group will have most of their nights free to do what they want. The Volunteer Service Office has also planned for the students to see some of the sites that Maryland has to offer.

"They plan to get a van to go to DC, and they want us to be able to see the inner harbor and the museums," said Bonatati.

These trips do not only help the less fortunate; they also help the students, themselves, see the world in a different light.

"It's a great way to expose yourself to different situations, to different populations of people that you may never had experience or exposure to," said DiDomenico.

"It'll be a good eye-opener, I think, learn a little more about America. I grew up in a small city in Utah," Harper said.

Habitat for Humanity International is a non-profit organization that has built more than 125,000 houses around the world, according to the HFHI website (www.habitat.org).

The students who are going to Marion County, South Carolina, to help with HFHI will have a full week of hard work ahead of them.

Tiffany Funk, 18, a freshman nursing pre-med major from San Diego, Calif., has worked with HFHI in the past and is looking forward to doing it again, "It is a lot of work. We will work all day, into the evening."

"It's an excellent opportunity to meet and to really get to know students from your campus as well as other campuses, because a lot of those there will be other campuses' at the sites we will be serving at," said DiDomenico.

The group will be working alongside two other college groups and with members of the community to try to achieve their goal of building a home for a family during the week that they are there, Funk said.

The students in this group get to see firsthand the people whom they are helping and whose lives they are changing by donating their time and effort.

"We're going to be meeting the family, as well, and I'm really looking forward to meeting someone who benefits from other people volunteering their time," Gray said.

"Its not like other community projects, where you're collecting soup cans. You get to see the effects and how you get to change people's lives positively," said Funk

The HFHI group will work for a half day on Wed., March 12, and they will have the free time to relax and have fun at Myrtle Beach, DiDomenico explained.

Although on the surface these projects appear to be a lot of work and not really much of a vacation, DiDomenico insists that "it's really fun; it's like one of those TV reality shows; it's like a mini-version of that with some community service integrated into it."