Student groups set to provide help to region hit by Hurricane Katrina

Several student groups are traveling south this spring break to help people who were affected… Several student groups are traveling south this spring break to help people who were affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Jake Liefer, the head of Cornerstone Christian Fellowship’s spring break trip, is one of those students.

Liefer, along with 18 other Pitt students will drive approximately 20 hours to Taylorsville, Miss. – a rural town approximately 100 miles from the Gulf Coast – to repair and rebuild the damaged homes affected by the hurricane. The group will spend a week in Mississippi and stay in a local church.

“The town was pretty much in the direct line of the hurricane,” Liefer said, “so it got hit pretty bad.”

After Student Government Board denied the organization funding for the trip, the Cornerstone group decided to pay for the trip itself. According to Liefer, each student will pay $250.

The group also received funding from members’ hometown churches, which donated more than $1,000 to the cause.

“A lot of people feel like the problems have been fixed,” said Liefer, who added that he felt the media hasn’t given a lot of coverage to the hurricane damage lately. “But the reality of it is that there are still plenty of problems.”

Cornerstone also plans on organizing a fundraiser with the Hillel Jewish University Center, which will send a group of students to New Orleans during spring break.

Hillel President Elan Strait said the groups will try to organize a fundraiser that represents both organizations.

“We have the same goal,” Strait said.

The group from Hillel will stay in a missionary church and will paint and repair buildings damaged by the hurricane.

But Cornerstone and Hillel are not the only Pitt groups that plan to help Katrina-affected areas this spring break.

Elizabeth Seitz, a third-year Pitt Law student, recruited other law students to travel with the Student Hurricane Network to the Gulf Coast area and help in Katrina-affected areas.

Law students and administrators nationwide formed the Student Hurricane Network right after Hurricane Katrina. The association gives law students the opportunity to help inform citizens of their legal rights, as well as research legislation.

According to Seitz, 15 Pitt Law students will travel to New Orleans and one student will travel to Gulfport, Miss.

Five of the students going to New Orleans will do physical work, such as rebuilding, and the other students will do legal work, such as research, data entry and sorting through files.

And, while some Pitt students will travel to hurricane-affected areas, others are doing what they can to help from Pitt’s campus.

The Pitt 4-Square Club showed “Fight Club” Thursday, and collected soap bars for the families affected by Hurricane Katrina.

“We have about one-and-a-half Huggies boxes filled so far,” said Justin Keogh, the president of Pitt 4-Square.

The group will collect soap throughout the semester and give it to the Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community – a church in the South Side that sponsored members to travel to New Orleans.