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News
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Photos of the spring break community service trip to New
Orleans.
For
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Kappa Epsilon, click
here. The
Delta Psi chapter website.
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March 19, 2007
Fraternity
goes to New Orleans for spring break trip
Shannon
McEnerneys
After
spending less than a week in New Orleans, sophomore Alex Alderson already
knows he will be returning in the near future and hopes to return
annually.
Over spring break, Alderson, the community service chair for his
fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon, and his brothers, made a trip down to the
areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina to help in the relief efforts.
“It was my first time going to New Orleans and I really want to make
this an annual thing,” Alderson said. “So much needs to be done there.
It’s a great city and I loved it. … Everybody is so nice and a bunch
of volunteers had us over to their house for dinner.”
The fraternity came to campus in 2001, and as a smaller, lesser-known
brotherhood, is currently working on community service efforts to “do
something good,” Alderson said.
Beacon of Hope was the volunteering organization working with the
fraternity.
“It just blew my mind how much destruction is still down there so long
after (the hurricane) happened,” Alderson said. “It’s not really in
anybody’s mind anymore, but whole neighborhoods are just wrecked and
water lines have risen and receded.”
Most of the volunteer work the fraternity aided in involved helping
residential neighborhoods prepare houses for sale so money can be put back
into the economy and rebuilding can continue.
The brothers removed rock and debris from lawns, in addition to painting
over graffiti that was destroying part of the levee, said sophomore Andrew
Herrick.
Herrick and sophomore Vince Marshall, two brothers who went on the trip,
plan to go back to New Orleans in the summer and continue to volunteer.
“It’s just crazy,” Herrick said. “Some parts of the neighborhood
we were in had houses that were built up beautifully, but the house next
door would be overgrown with weeds with nothing done.”
The inconsistency in the subdivisions was one of the main things Herrick
said he noticed.
“Some people don’t have the funds to come back and rebuild their
house, obviously that is a huge operation,” he said. “But so many
houses in the neighborhoods had nothing done to them.”
Marshall said lines were visible on the houses where the water had risen
up to.
“Some of the houses were completely gutted,” Marshall said. “We
helped clean up the houses in the neighborhood the best we could.”
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