While many students opt to spend the entirety of winter break at home, six Owls set aside one week to perform community service over 500 miles away from campus.
Alternative Break, a long-held service trip program hosted by the Office of Student Involvement, returned once again this year with a trip to Kiptopeke State Park in Virginia.
Director of Student Involvement Jessica Gagne Cloutier said that when deciding on a partner to work with for the trip, there are some key factors to consider. “We like to work with partners who are comfortable having a group of volunteers that don’t necessarily come as highly skilled, so service that’s appropriate for our skillset and abilities,” she said.
In terms of this year’s trip, she said the main goal of the service was to help the staff at Kiptopeke State Park repair and replace portions of the park’s boardwalk that connected to a fishing pier. In addition, the team assisted in helping paint a lodge, fill potholes and trail work.
First-year Sammi Goldblatt became interested in the trip after her parents let her know about the opportunity. “My high school used to do a service trip to Nicaragua and Puerto Rico and every year that happened I was sick with something so I’ve always wanted to do something like this,” Goldblatt said.
After attending an information meeting before the trip, Goldblatt was fully on board, having submitted an application the day that it was released.
Goldblatt said she had initial feelings of nervousness but felt better after attending pre-trip meetings and remembering the trip’s mission. “The first night you guys really just bond so quickly because you spend so much time together. All of us were nervous but all the nerves went away after the first night,” she explained.
Goldblatt said the trip also helped with her desired career path. “I want to be a therapist so I think it was really helpful to see how everyone worked together… I think that’ll be applied in my career path because I won’t know whoever I’m sharing a building with or if I create a private practice I’m going to have to learn how to work with people I don’t know necessarily,” she said.
For future trips, Goldblatt said she would be willing to attend depending on the type of service. “I want it to be something that I’m passionate about,” she noted.
Junior Ashleigh Moroni, who works in the Office of Student Involvement, said she became interested in the trip directly after finding out that the dates lined up well with her schedule. “It’s an opportunity to see a different part of the country and to engage in that service somewhere that’s not what we have the means to do on campus,” Moroni said.
Despite a tight-knit group of students, Moroni said the team was greatly helpful to the park staff in completing the project. “We inherently tripled the amount of people they had working because they work primarily on a four-to-six person team… one of the rangers told us that had it just been their team and we hadn’t been around, the project that we completed in a week would’ve taken them a week and a half or two additional weeks,” she explained.
While the trip was centered on service, students also had ample time to explore the local area. “We went down to the beach area and watched the sunset several times, walked, we explored. Kiptopeke is technically in the town of Cape Charles… [which] is a beach town so they had a little downtown area,” Moroni said. Additionally, the group set aside a day to visit Virginia Beach, the most populous city in the state.
Moroni said her hope is that in the coming years, the program can return to offering more than one trip per year. “We were already talking on that trip of what opportunities there could be to go into next year so there could be more service opportunities offered at different places and different times of the year to engage more people,” she said.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Gagne Cloutier said there were a few different Alternative Break opportunities, not only during winter break but also offered during spring break and over the summer.
Another major change to the program was a temporary shift away from a student-leadership model to a professional-led one. During the trip, both Gagne Cloutier and KSC Photographer and Social Media Manager Will Wrobel helped to lead the student group.
In terms of the future of the program, Gagne Cloutier hopes to bring back the student-leadership model. “It’s a different dynamic when students travel by themselves, there’s a different, even greater level of connectivity that they have [and] we’d love to get back into that space,” she said.
Nathan Hope can be contacted at
nhope@kscequinox.com
