The Rocket

Issue date: 3/30/07 Section: Focus

Media Credit: Nate Daymut [Click to enlarge]

Spring break.

A time to relax. A time to have fun.

A time to clean up after the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history?

For a group of 10 SRU students, the latter doesn't seem like such a strange choice. They volunteered to go to New Orleans over spring break to assist in the ongoing cleanup efforts after Hurricane Katrina. They had no idea that the back-breaking manual labor would be the easy part of the trip.

Every year since 1994, student volunteers have traveled to various cities across the country as part of the University's Institute for Community, Service-Learning and Nonprofit Leadership CareBreak Program.

This year, 53 students visited cities like Baltimore, East St. Louis and San Francisco (see story on page C-1) to participate in various community service projects.

The group in New Orleans was supposed to return to Western Pennsylvania in the afternoon on Friday, March 16. They arrived in Atlanta, Ga., around 9:30 a.m. with three hours to wait for their connecting flight to Pittsburgh.

The students would see the wait time extended many times over the next several hours.

Bill Painter, 20, and a junior accounting major, was one of two student leaders of the New Orleans group. He said the return flight was initially delayed from 12:30 p.m. to 1:15. Five minutes later, it was cancelled.

"We were led to believe that we would probably get on with standby," Painter said. "If I had known then what I know now, I would've booked us other flights."

The problem these and many other SRU students encountered was a dangerous snow and ice storm in Pittsburgh. Flights were also cancelled returning from Ireland, Italy, Peru and the Czech Republic, carrying students who were studying abroad over break.

Because the problem was weather-related and not the airline's fault, no accommodations were made for the students. Painter managed to obtain food vouchers for himself and one other student, but the airline did not provide hotel rooms.

Continued...

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