Storm Stories
In the days following Hurricane Katrina last summer, not many people paid attention to Dartmouth's reaction, but that didn't stop concerned students anxious to do their part. Senior Fellow Nick Taranto '06—who had just returned from researching the intersection of public, private and third-sector disaster relief responses in tsunamidevastated Southeast Asia—immediately got in touch with Stuart Lord, dean of the Tucker Foundation, to find out how to help.
Lord's goal in responding to Katrina was to establish a more-efficient and coordinated College effort than had occurred in the wake of the tsunami. He created the Dartmouth Emergency Response Committee, which consists of a student-and-staff executive team that oversees several student-coordinated subcommittees and provides a template for incident-specific efforts. The group addressing the hurricanes aftermathkatrina Help—immediately planned a service trip as the centerpiece of its efforts. For two weeks in December, 36 students and nine College staff members traveled to Biloxi, Mississippi, to help with the relief efforts.
Taranto says that while he was "hoping for 100 percent participation," he thinks about 75 percent of the campus got involved in some way or another. He also estimates that Katrina Help has "contributed about $500,000 in volunteer labor in addition to $5,000 in cash donations from the College community and $25,000 in contributions from the president's office."
Another group of students traveled to Biloxi during the March break to continue Dartmouth's rebuilding efforts, and the Tucker Foundation plans to send student groups at intervals during at least two more years with a goal of sending 1,000 students in the three-year span.
Sonia Faruqi '07, who came to Dartmouth from the United Arab Emirates, has drawn attention to another natural disaster: When an earthquake shook Pakistan last October, she contacted Lord out of concern that Pakistan would be forgotten in the wake of earlier events. Because of the distance, a service trip to Pakistan was not an option. So Faruqi and her group—Asia Relief—focused on fundraising. To date the group has raised and donated more than $20,000, and Faruqi says that the groups efforts will continue.
