Behrend Beacon
March 19, 2010
www.thebehrendbeacon.com
Alternative Spring Break club puts partying on back-burner
CONNOR SATTELY
er litor-in-chiet
40 students, faculty, and staff
from Penn State Behrend
hopped on a plane during
Spring Break to head to the
gulf coast.
Unlike many other south
seekers, though, they went for
a different reason than party
ing.
The trip was this year's Alter
native Spring Break, which
sent a total of 67 students, fac
ulty, and staff - including 18
from Penn State Dußois, and
nine from York. Those who
were willing to give up their
Spring Break for service saw
first-hand how much work still
needed to be done in areas
deeply affected by Hurricane
Katrina.
“It was eye-opening,” said
Behrend freshman Sarah Ce
vallos, a biology major. “It's a
once-in-a-lifetime experience.
You see not only the destruc
tion that went through the city,
but a lot of the rebuilding and
recovery efforts as well.”
Cevallos and the rest of the
group had the opportunity to be
a part of those efforts, each in
Meals in
Erie Hall
JEFF KRAMER
copy editor
After the recent fire, Dobbins
has started serving students a
similar menu to what they used
to serve in a new location at
Erie Hall. In order to prepare
the food, Behrend mobile
kitchen, the price of which
couldn’t be disclosed.
In order to compensate for
the inconvenience, the univer
sity deposited $5O of meal
points into each student's meal
plan account.
Randy Geering, Director of
Housing And Food Services,
said that the fire did not reach
far beyond the Gazebo. It en
tered the dining area and
melted the TV in the corner, but
it didn’t proceed. All of the plas
tic casings that house the fluo
rescent lights melted as well.
The university may be mak
ing improvements to Dobbins
while cleaning the water dam
age to the kitchen areas.
“That’s what’s being dis
cussed now.” said Geering.
Dobbins relocation to Erie
Hall will displace several kine
siology courses to the Junker
Center.
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their own small way.
“Our group had a project that
was only about three weeks
old,” said Cevallos. “Our home
owner was a woman who had
gotten a divorce a few months
before Katrina, and then her
house was destroyed during the
storm.”
That homeowner, Cevallos
said, was moved to Philadel
phia for about two years, then
returned home only to be a vic
tim of contractor fraud, a com
mon occurrence in the
post-Katrina Gulf Coast. The
homeowner has been living in
her FEMA trailer for two years.
Students on the trip spent
roughly six to eight hours a day
at their work sites. Cevallos
said that her job mainly con
sisted of sanding walls and in
stalling joint componds.
After their day of work, many
students on the trip had the op
portunity to head into New Or
leans to experience the city’s
culture for themselves.
That's what Behrend senior
Molly Eberly will take with her
as one of her favorite parts of
the trip.
“The culture in the French
Quarter was amazing,” said
ASB We Are Penn State chant breaks out
A chance encounter over Spring Break
allowed 40 Behrend students, faculty, and
staff to realize how invested Penn State
truly is in community service.
“There were about forty of us standing
outside of Cafe du Monde, getting ready to
go in,” recalls Matt Haubach, a senior eco
nomics major from Penn State Behrend.
“The next thing we heard was from inside
the cafe, a big group of people yelling WE
ARE!' So, of course, we replied in kind.”
After heading inside, the Behrend group
discovered that a 16-person strong group
of University Park students, also in New
Orleans for Alternative Spring Break, was
sitting down enjoying coffee and dough
Lawrence Hall evacuated after
A construction worker hit a
gas main at the Dobbins con
struction project Thursday,
prompting Behrend officials to
evacuate Lawrence Hall.
The gas leak, described by
Housing and Food Services Di
rector Randy Geering as “sub
stantial,” leaked gas for roughly
20 minutes before it was turned
off.
“There was a heavy smell
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CONNOR SATTELY
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CONNOR SATTELY
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Alternative Spring Break member Erika Glover scans the house that she is about to help rebuild.
Eberly, a mechanical engineer
ing major. “Seeing Cafe du
Monde was fun, and the food
down there was incredible.”
For Cevallos, other sights in
the city caught her eye as well.
“We drove through areas
where there used to be houses,
but they are all gone,” she said.
“There are projects there that
tore down the remnants and
nuts in the popular cafe.
“It was just a random event,” Haubach
said, “but it led to one of the coolest Penn
State experiences I’ve had. It made me
proud to be a Penn State student, to realize
how strong the Penn State body is.”
Brad Stamm, a senior meteorology major
from Penn State University Park, said that
the meeting wasn't too much of a surprise.
“For people that don't go to Penn State,
these encounters might be kind of
strange,” said Stamm, who was on his first
Alternative Spring Break trip.
“To Penn State students, it's really the
norm. When we got down here, we just ran
into another service group from Penn State
staying at the same hotel at us, and then we
saw the Behrend group at th«£cafe. Penn
State students are everywhere doing serv-
into the surrounding areas,” he
said. “The gas was not harmful
unless in the case of prolonged
exposure.”
Geering said that Behrend
Police and Safety was called,
and made the decision to pull
the fire alarm in Lawrence Hall
as a safety precaution, largely
due to a strong westerly wind.
After fifteen or twenty minutes,
the students were let back into
their rooms.
Police and Safety had noti
fied Residence Life prior to
SGA
have started new houses, but a
lot of them don't have anyone
living in them.”
In that way, the trip provided
students a chance to learn the
details on why the city was af
fected so much by the storm.
“I never knew much about
the floods, or the levees break
ing,” said Cevallos. “Our advi
sor [Financial Aid employee]
evacuating the building, but it
still served as a surprise for
many students in the building.
It provided a hint of frustra
tion for freshman Sam Cramer.
“We cant live somewhere
that always has something
wrong and gets evacuated,” he
said.
Freshman James Boorman-
Padgett, also a resident of
Lawrence Hall, wasn’t too sur
prised.
“I started to smell gas in the
room, so I wasn't too very sur-
ections/Ve in f*rogress!
Giselle [Hudson] was from
New Orleans, so she got to tell
us childhood stories, teach us
about the city, and also show us
what happened to the levees
during Katrina.”
All of those aspects together
made for a whirlwind of expe
riences that left Cevallos ex
hausted after a 13-hour trip
back to Erie.
Stamm's trip was very similar to the
Behrend group's, though his individual
group didn't perform quite the work he was
expecting.
“Rather than doing construction, we ac
tually planted Cyprus trees all week,” he
said. “At first, we were kind of surprised,
because we planned to build houses.”
Cyprus trees, Stamm explained, were
torn up by the hundreds of thousands dur
ing Hurricane Katrina, and provide a
strong barrier of resistance against hurri
cane force winds. Replanting those trees,
he says, will help protect from future
storms.
'“The first day, you could plant a tree any
where,” he said. “By the lime we left, it was
hard to find an open space.”
gas main leak
prised when the fire alarm went
off,” he said.
Geering says that the worker
was part of Perry Construction,
the group working on the Dob
bins renovation project. The ac
cident will not cause any
significant delay or damage to
the renovation.
“It feels kind of major, be
cause of the safety precautions,
but it's not that big of a deal,”
said Geering. “This has hap
pened a few times in the past
on construction projects.".
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continued from front page
thought we could, so that gives
him more time to complete the
reconstruction,” Geering said.
“The main dining area and
serving area should be ready by
August 2010, but we still may
choose options to rebuild the
Gazebo that will take a longer
time to be completed. If we de
cide to make the rebuilding
process for the Gazebo area
longer we provide an alternate
dining area in addition to the
main dining area of Dobbins.”
"Our insurance company,
Factory Mutual, is in the
process of evaluating what the
value is of everything that has
been lost and damaged."
"We are not in a position to
even ask contractors how much
it will cost to replace all of our
losses."
According to Geering, there
will be no raises in tuition as a
result of the renovations be
cause Housing and Food Serv
ices are a separate entity from
the University.
Secretary
Senators