Hurricane Katrina's assault on the Gulf Coast region has prompted a massive humanitarian effort at Dartmouth College encompassing the entire community.
Last night, 370 people crowded Alumni Hall in the Hopkins Center for a Katrina Help meeting, where they banded together to help the thousands left homeless in the wake of the hurricane.
"Just talking to people around campus, everyone is interested in this issue," said Nick Taranto '06, assistant to the Tucker Foundation dean for hurricane relief. "Everyone wants to get involved in some capacity, so it's falling onto our shoulders how to get these people involved."
Katrina Help is the first subcommittee of the newly established Dartmouth College Emergency Response Committee, an organizational structure that is set into motion after disasters.
The committee breaks down into student-run subcommittees, with each focusing on a different type of aid based on the nature of the crisis. In the case of Katrina Help, the subcommittees are communications, service, fundraising, donations and education.
"We learned from the tsunami and 9/11," Tucker Foundation Dean Stuart Lord said on the creation of the committee. "Everyone kept asking, 'What are we going to do?' If something else happens, the structure's going to be in place so we don't have to keep reinventing the wheel."
Even though most students were off campus during when the hurricane hit, Dartmouth's community response has already been overwhelming.
Dartmouth Medical School has raised $300 by selling blue ribbons, and the graduate schools have plans for a fundraising run. Engineers Without Borders is considering joining rebuilding efforts in New Orleans.
Students are also reaching beyond Dartmouth's borders to raise money to support the hurricane relief effort.
"We have realized that fundraising will be a key element of this campaign, and we're looking for alumni to match the funds that we raise," Taranto said.
Student Body President Noah Riner '06 confirmed that the Student Assembly will support Katrina Help logistically and possibly financially.
"The support that Student Assembly is giving is logistical: reserving rooms, providing resources for the different committees," Riner said. "We're basically facilitating in any way possible. The students get the ideas, and we help point them in the right direction."
Riner also left open the possibility that the Assembly will appropriate some of its own funds for the hurricane's victims,
"I expect that Student Assembly will provide financial assistance," he said.
On Aug. 29, soon after the disaster, the College's Office of Alumni Relations set up a weblog to facilitate connections between members of the Dartmouth community.
Hanover residents and alumni in the Gulf Coast region have used the weblog to offer temporary housing to those whose homes were destroyed.
The weblog also provides a means for friends and families of Dartmouth students and alumni to connect with those who were otherwise unreachable due to the lack of communications systems in Katrina's aftermath.
Those whom the storm hit hardest have used the weblog as a forum to offer their impressions of the storm's disastrous effects.
"Essentially, there is no FEMA or Red Cross coming to Picayune, [Miss.] to give us relief. I don't know what to say about our government," Dr. Beverly Love '72 wrote on the weblog from Montgomery, Ala., where she had gone for supplies. "This is a war to help our own people."
