SCU Alumni Immerse Themselves in Community Service
The holiday most people associate with New Orleans is Mardis Gras. But for the group of 34 alumni and friends who comprised the first immersion trip sponsored by the SCU Alumni Association (and the first alumni group from a Jesuit University), New Year’s and New Orleans will forever be linked.
Wielding axes and crowbars, hammers and brooms, alumni representing the classes of 1958 through 2006 spent five days in New Orleans tearing down hurricane-ravaged houses in an effort to help rebuild the city.
The group converged on the Big Easy on Dec. 28, financing their own travel. Once in the city, the alumni worked with local Catholic Charities officials and even homeowners themselves. Some evenings alumni who currently live in New Orleans hosted dinner for the immersion group.
Santa Clara’s efforts were much appreciated by the locals, notes Mary Modeste Smoker ’81, assistant director of the Alumni for Others program. She organized the trip and participated in it as well. Cabdrivers, waiters, passers-by, all voiced their support. “People stopped their cars and said, ‘Thank you. Thank you for helping us rebuild our city,” she says. The Santa Clara sweatshirts many alumni wore brought many queries of “Where are you from?”
As they worked, the group formed bonds—with the people of New Orleans and with each other. “The aspect of this experience that most surprised me was the community that developed among the 34 participants. We began as almost total strangers. By the end we were connected in a profound and fundamental way,” says Michael Colyer, assistant director, Ignatian Center, Kolvenbach Solidarity Program.
Most people joined the trip as a way to formally live out the Jesuit ideals learned at SCU, Smoker says. “The idea of giving back to the community is really instilled in Santa Clara students, and current students have several chances to go on immersion trips,” she says. “Many of the alumni who volunteered for this trip attended SCU long before the immersion program began. This trip gave them an opportunity not only to volunteer but to feel the strength that comes when people work together for a common goal.”
Despite the hard work the group performed gutting homes and cleaning up, most felt they got much more out of the trip than they actually gave. “It was just a wonderful way to start the new year,” Smoker says, “to give the people of New Orleans hope.”
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