Ike aftermath reveals lack of volunteerism

By Natalie Larsen     10/2/08 7:00pm

Nervously slipping in and out of dreams and waking nightmares, I literally jumped off my bed when my floor rep pounded on the door. My off campus refugee and I quickly grabbed our stuff and headed downstairs to the shelter. Hurricane Ike was making his grand entrance. I slept decently, but I loathed the fact that Ike was an unknown. I couldn't see him or face him, and the foreign concept of a hurricane was both exhilarating and terrifying. When I woke up the next morning and went to check the news, I saw the devastation Ike had inflicted upon the greater Houston area. I didn't question how the mess would disappear because I assumed that the community at large would work together to restore our city. However, I soon discovered that the community at large included everyone but me.

Rice University's mission statement claims that through their commitment to our education they hope to cultivate "a diverse community of learning and discovery that produces leaders across the spectrum of human endeavor." But what kind of leaders are we to be if we never learn how to serve our neighbors and unite with our community in the real world, not just within our hedges? While the majority of Houston was suffering from power outages, food and gas shortages and wreckage, we were comfortably attending our classes when we could have been gaining real life experience by serving others.

Many of our teachers and work crews were among the innumerable Houstonians juggling their obligations on our campus with their responsibilities of restoring sanity to their overturned homes, families and lives. The university commendably extended use of our facilities to these staff members, allowed the Texas Medical Center to use our parking lot as a helipad, and organized volunteer groups through the Community Involvement Center. However, I feel ashamed that as students we did nothing to help the members of our larger Houston community cope with this disaster because we were expected to go to class.

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I lament our administration's missed opportunity to teach us through their response to Hurricane Ike. I feel that they greatly underestimated the quality of people they admit as students. Many students I've spoken with have welcomed the idea of organizing our numbers into relief groups and have also felt the need to serve. After all, did we not all relentlessly engage in service projects and extracurricular activities in high school? I recall that the Admission Council thought our service experience was important enough to include in our applications to Rice.

I'm not suggesting that the administration should have given us the whole week off, but I know that I didn't accomplish anything worthwhile in my afternoon classes on the first Tuesday back. I also know that I gave up the chance to serve that day with another organization that asked for volunteers because I was concerned with attending important lectures. Perhaps I should just be ashamed of myself for not skipping class on Tuesday, but I quickly made up for it and spent my birthday that Saturday having the time of my life raking leaves, cutting branches, taping up windows and offering smiles to those who lost so much.

Service isn't about convenience. It may not be convenient to miss yet another day on the syllabus. It may not be convenient to organize hundreds of 18-21 year-old college students into a service group. It certainly wasn't convenient to have Hurricane Ike barrel into our city three weeks ago. So many things may not be convenient, but working alongside my fellow Houstonians to repair our neighbors' homes taught me more than my classes could have and prepared me to be the kind of person I want to be today and tomorrow. While disasters often trigger our sense of service into action, we need to serve everyday. I invite everyone to serve now. If you wait for a convenient time to help others, you will miss out on the great and endless rewards of service.

Natalie Larsen is a Sid Richardson College sophomore.

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