An Alternative Experience

An Alternative Experience

With interviews from Dan Na Luo, Emily Keene, and Mark Kelly!

An Alternative Experience

International relations junior Alice Topping, right, and public administration and public policy junior Chelsea Satkowiak go over plans during a site leader meeting for Alternative Spring Break on Tuesday at Erikson Hall. Both Topping and Satkowiak are leaders for an Alternative Spring Break trip to South Dakota.

Students prepare for MSU’s service-based spring break program started in 1991

By Kate Jacobson
The State News article on 03/03/10

Tiffany Chritz has her bags packed. She’s ready to go on spring break to Jamaica.

It’s her first time out of the country, and she can’t believe spring break is only days away. The last item on her list to pack? Naturally, it’s a paintbrush — a tool she’ll use to touch up schools in Jamaica.

For four years, Chritz, a nutritional science senior, has traveled across the country helping people in need as part of MSU’s Alternative Spring Break program, or ASB.

Chritz, along with about 250 other MSU students and staff, will hop on planes, trains and buses next week to travel to places as close as Chicago and as far away as Mexico, and participate in community service projects facilitated through ASB.

Humble beginnings
Since 1991, the ASB program has expanded from an experiment in service offering two or three trips per year to a program with more than 20 trips and an almost $176,000 budget.

Former East Lansing Mayor and MSU alumnus Sam Singh was one of the founders of the ASB program. He said he and a group of students were looking to create student-run, service-based spring break opportunity.

The group started looking at opportunities in the Greater Lansing community and soon expanded their sights on places spanning the U.S.

Singh’s first trip was to Homestead, Fla., after Hurricane Andrew hit the Florida coast in the early 1990s. A group of 50 students traveled to the disaster-stricken region to aid in the recovery efforts.

“That was one of the most high-profile disasters in the early part of the ’90s,” Singh said. “There was a strong interest for students because they saw the damage that was done.”

One of the challenges in the early days of ASB was finding opportunities for students across the country. Without luxuries such as the Internet or cell phones, Singh said planning was difficult.

“Now there is so much more activity happening on college campuses across the country, programs are more connected,” Singh said. “It’s still a lot of work for the organizers, but we were out there trying to find organizations and building those relationships.”

Singh said the main goal of ASB when it started was to offer students the ability to jump into service, and he is excited at how much the program has grown since 1991.

“It’s very rewarding to know that I was a part of a group of 15 to 20 students that were thinking about these ideas, and that were not necessarily knowing they were going to continue, but wanting to put them into place for our fellow students,” Singh said.

Experience of a lifetime
For students involved in ASB, the experience is something completely unique to anything else on campus.

Chritz serves as the co-chair of ASB and is part of the 13-person executive board that oversees ASB.

The student-run initiative plans the trips and assigns two site leaders to each trip location. Chritz said ASB is a good way for students to get involved in volunteering and become open to new experiences.

“You’re there with a group of people you don’t really know, but you’re going with the same intentions,” Chritz said.

For some, the attractiveness of ASB is the chance to volunteer.

English junior Laurel Denay said she is looking forward to her Washington, D.C., trip because she is interested in helping at a homeless shelter in the nation’s capital.

“As a global citizen, as an American citizen, you should always be giving back and be mindful of people who aren’t as blessed as you or don’t have what you have,” Denay said.

Those traveling abroad hope to immerse themselves in a foreign culture as well as gain global experience.

Music education sophomore Katie Anderson said she is looking forward to spending her spring break in Mexico helping the local community.

Last year, Anderson went on a trip to Philadelphia and worked in soup kitchens and homeless shelters.

Seeing the people impacted by her service and experiencing a different lifestyle gave her a new perspective.

“It was interesting to see where these people had been and how they ended up where they are now,” Anderson said. “It made me more grateful for what I have, as far as not having to live in the conditions that these people had been living in.”

Expanded vision
The ASB program plans to expand in the future, offering more trips for interested students not only in the spring but in the winter and summer as well.

Staff adviser for ASB Kevin Schwemmin said this year the program is offering two summer programs and hosted a winter break trip to New Orleans. He said the winter and summer trips filled quickly, despite having little advertisement. In the past two years, programs haven’t stayed open long, with only a handful of students dropping out, he said.

Chritz said the typical waiting list for ASB trips range from 50 to 100 people each year. This year, the list was only 50 people because three more trips were offered during the spring break period.

Domestic Site and Service Development Chair Dan Na Luo said she hopes program continues to attract more students each year.

“That’s definitely going to be a goal, really kick up the fundraising, bring costs down so a lot of people can participate on the trips and then opening up and offering more opportunities for students,” Luo said.

The ASB experience is a unique opportunity no one should miss, Chritz said.

“You have to have the experience to understand,” she said. “It’s so hard to explain not only the impact that it has on your life, but also the impact on all of the people that you’re around in a week’s time.”

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