Editor’s note: This week, we’re marking the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina with a pair of posts about how the Roosevelt community pitched in to help after the tragedy. 

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”

In a sense, that’s what the Roosevelt University community did after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast in late August.

Buoyed by President Chuck Middleton’s call for action shortly after the hurricane struck, Roosevelt faculty members, students, administrators and staff opened their hearts and their pocketbooks in an attempt to help.

Some of the community’s outpouring of support consisted simply of donations made to organizations like the United Way and the American Red Cross, in addition to the University’s own Hurricane Katrina Community Relief Fund.

Among the many individuals and groups that gave generously, Roosevelt’s Office of Student Activities as well as the University’s Administrative Assembly and its Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 391 held fundraising events on behalf of Roosevelt students from affected areas.

More than $3,000 was raised for the benefit of the affected students.  In addition, the University hosted and financially assisted 22 students who attended Roosevelt during the fall 2005 semester after being displaced from their Gulf Coast universities.

Other gestures of help from the Roosevelt community came in the form of volunteerism at devastated sites along the Gulf Coast.

LEFT: Judith Gouwens (left), assistant professor of elementary education, and Kay Covode, a librarian from the Bay Saint Louis-Waveland School District, sort through supplies in a makeshift storage facility. RIGHT: One of the only landmarks standing after the 2005 storm had destroyed much of Waveland, Miss., was a sign commemorating those who helped with recovery during a hurricane in 1969.

No matter how large or small the effort, however, the Roosevelt community lived up to its long-held tradition and mission of social justice in ways that would have made both Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt proud.

“We encouraged offices, departments, clubs and organizations throughout the University to select a project and work on it as a unit,” said Roosevelt University Provost Pamela Reid, who called town hall meetings at the Chicago and Schaumburg campuses to discuss ways community members could get involved.

Answering Reid’s call, members of the College of Education organized one of the more interesting relief efforts by partnering with a devastated school district in Bay Saint Louis, Miss., located on the Gulf Coast near the eye of the storm.

“We saw people who were still living in tents and met a teacher who was living with her husband and two kids in their car,” said Judith Gouwens, an assistant professor of elementary education who made a trip with students to Bay Saint Louis in October.

“Virtually everyone was homeless and everything near the coast was flattened,” said Gouwens, who, because of the experience, has begun to do research, including interviewing school superintendents along the Gulf Coast, for a groundbreaking study and publication on how schools respond to natural disasters.

Three students and an adjunct instructor joined Gouwens on what was to be the first of two trips to the Bay Saint Louis-Waveland School District, where first clean up and later rebuilding were—and are—needed for school children taking courses in makeshift facilities.

“I chose to be included in the trip because I felt I needed to do more than just donate money,” said Veronica Baez, a graduate elementary education major who was shocked to see school buildings reduced to rubble and to find classrooms filled knee-deep with debris.

“What amazed me most was that I expected the people down there to be devastated, and they weren’t. They were strong and trying to do what they could to get back to normal,” Baez added.

The second trip to Bay Saint Louis, also in October, was led by Sheila Coffin, the assistant dean of the College of Education.

“It was the kind of trip where you worked hard physically trying to create space in the Quonset huts so they could serve as the school district’s administrative offices,” said Coffin, who was joined by two College of Education students in helping to move things to a new location in order to make room.

“The devastation is so overwhelming that it’s difficult to comprehend how people continue to live each day amidst the debris,” she added. “Viewing the devastated areas shocks one’s entire sensorial system. The sights and smells are so unbelievable. You have to admire the resilience of people who have lost everything and are so willing to rebuild their lives.”

Stacey Oliver, an undergraduate majoring in early childhood education, was one of the students who accompanied Coffin.

“It was nice to see the outpouring of compassion and great to see how the community came together to help one another out.”

“It was nice to see the outpouring of compassion and great to see how the community came together to help one another out,” said Oliver, who hopes to be part of a future volunteer trip to the Bay Saint Louis area.