"It was pitch black outside," second-year Engineering student Justin Starr said.
The Amtrak train arrived late at night, after all, but as Starr explained, he was only five minutes away from the station stop in a major city.
"It was surreal," he said, commenting on the darkness.
A closer look revealed the cause: "If you really pressed your face to the windows, you could see rows and rows of houses ... all just abandoned," Starr said. "They were all completely dark. It was like part of the city was still a ghost town."
The next day, second-year College student Ben Cooper said he thought to himself, "How can this be America?" Cooper said he saw "mile after mile of damage."
Starr and Cooper were among 23 students who participated in "Technology and Citizenship," an interdisciplinary course about New Orleans offered during the January term. According to Nicole Hurd, assistant dean and director of the Center for Undergraduate Excellence, the course was a "combination of academic rigor and ... hands-on service."
This combination is what initially attracted Cooper. He discovered it was difficult to get involved in New Orleans without prior training or the ability to make a long-term commitment.
This course provided Cooper with the opportunity he was looking for to physically help the people of New Orleans. Additionally, he said because of the class material, "you could make sense of what you were seeing."
Third-year Engineering student Beth Dykes explained that the academic work was really a lesson in the culture of New Orleans, an element that she said needs to be taken into consideration when rebuilding.
"There are a lot of really strong community ties," Dykes said. "People just don't leave."
Second-year College student and classmate Lauren Tilton, a native of New Orleans, explained that New Orleans' culture has unique ways of dealing with basic American problems.
"I think Mardi Gras, Jazz Fest ... [and] even jazz itself are ways to cross the boundaries that have been set up by class and race, which are problems in every city in America," Tilton said.
The community also "has a charm that age only brings," she said.
Not only did students have a chance to get a taste of this culture, but they also were given the opportunity to relate to the local residents.
The lessons learned in class "made you appreciate what [the residents] were saying," Dykes said.
This multifaceted course was cross-listed in the College, Engineering School and Architecture School.
"One of the best things about January term is it lets multiple schools teach students from multiple departments," Hurd said. "It allows students and faculty to do things that we might not be able to coordinate during a regular semester."
She explained that during the first week instructors and guest speakers from the respective disciplines taught the students about the applications to New Orleans of such subjects as history, architecture, engineering and environmental science. Fieldwork in the city itself began the next week.
Starr said he found the week of academic preparation to be vital to the entire project. Without it, all their efforts would be out of context, he said.
"It's something to go to a place to just get your hands dirty and make a difference," Starr said. "But to really understand the kind of lives that they're living, to understand why they want to keep their land even though it's in a flood plain, to understand why we don't just bulldoze these houses because they're architecturally significant ... that makes the whole experience much more meaningful."
Engineering Prof. Kay Neeley, who specializes in the Department of Science, Technology, & Society, brought much of her expertise to the table in providing some of this background. Neeley explained that her field is quite relevant to New Orleans and to civilization in general.
"As a society, we live embedded in technological systems," Neeley said. "It follows then that anybody who is going to play a leadership role ... needs to understand the way technology is shaped by and, in turn, shapes that larger social environment."
At the heart of many of the issues, Neeley explained, was an area of study she called "ethical discipline for technology," which asks one to differentiate between what we can do and what we should do.
Neeley noted that no one would have purposely chosen to create a fascinating cultural climate, place it in a shipping location without much good land to build on, and then allow it to thrive and grow until it became a large and very special entity in a rather precarious position.
"Many of the incremental steps that we take do not appear to be particularly ... significant," Neeley said. "But over time, they accumulate into a system that may not have been anticipated or desired."
The unintended consequences of what we can do are an issue of particular urgency during the rebuilding process, Neeley explained.
As the second week of the course unfolded, students discovered for themselves these unintended consequences. Everyone was pretty quiet the first day, as they drove around observing the damage, Dykes said.
In order to cope, the students had immediate opportunities to help gut houses, Hurd said.
This put students in direct contact with the water damage. Starr said he didn't truly know what it entailed until he saw a living room filled with mold. He said cleaning it up required removing furniture and ripping up carpets and wooden floors.
"And drywall," he said, almost grunting. "You have to rip that off of the walls, and there's no one to tell you how to do it."
For Tilton, this was more than just an opportunity to get in there and do something. She said helping someone else take the first steps toward rebuilding helped her to start regaining a lost sense of control.
"I don't feel so helpless and hopeless anymore," Tilton said.
Upon returning home, students looked back on the experience with a number of reactions.
"An experience like this really makes you realize that the studies we're doing have actual effects," Cooper said.
In particular, Cooper said he learned that systems can fail and the functions of democracy can break down.
Tilton described how she gained a new perspective on an event she already lived through.
"Knowing ... [what] considerations need to be made has really helped me be very critical of the plan because if people aren't critical of it, people's voices are going to be left out," Tilton said.
The final project for the course was for each student to develop a plan for rebuilding the city. Dykes said she felt the most important thing is to start by building the people's trust. Tilton emphasized the need to get the residents back into the city so that the manpower for reconstruction will exist.
Looking forward, Starr already has taken some concrete steps outside of the classroom.
One day, when he had some free time, Starr went to visit the band at the class's host school.
"They were really into the dancing and the visuals and playing some really cool music that we don't necessarily play farther north," Starr said.
However, Starr said he also noticed the extremely poor condition the band was in.
"They lost so much in the hurricane," Starr said. "Instruments were held together with duck tape [and] there weren't enough."
Starr said people who are interested in music education wish that anyone who wants a chance to play music can do it, but in the school he visited, some students actually had to be turned away for lack of resources.
Consequently, Starr and several companions have started a charity called Horns for Hurricane Victims.
"I have an extra saxophone in my closet that I'm not even using," Starr said, and he knows that this is not unusual.
The organization has already begun accepting donations for this cause that Starr only learned about through his own eyes, beyond what the average American may have learned from the media.
"As much as you can see photos and read about destruction, you don't really understand it until you witness it firsthand," Starr said.
Read More
It’s okay not to be okay
By Mai Hukuoka | 3 days agoWhether talking to a friend, a loved one or a professional, it is so necessary, and human, to need more than you can provide for yourself.
Taking a break at Tangerines Kitchen
By Charley Thomas | 5 days agoWhat the restaurant somewhat lacks in ambiance, it compensates for in tasty dishes and prompt service.
Virginia Policy Lab — a hub for student-led policy action
By Katherine Haden | December 9, 2024Students propose their own projects and collaborate with other members to research their issues of interest, brainstorm solutions and write policy proposals.
