While some college kids jetted off to Florida or Cancun for spring break, one group of Penn students spent time gutting houses and discussing religion in New Orleans.
Last week, 22 students and three facilitators travelled to the site of Hurricane Katrina to be a part of Penn's first-ever student-run interfaith service trip.
The trip was a collaboration between Hillel and the Muslim Students Association with the dual purpose of serving the community and strengthening the relationship between the two faiths, explained College senior Naveed Rashid, a participant. It was sponsored by a $17,000 grant from the Fox Leadership program.
The group was made up of 11 students from Hillel, 11 students from MSA, Rabbi Michael Uram, Interim University Chaplain Charles Howard, and Religious Studies graduate student Ludmila Zamah.
The students worked with a community-service program called Acorn, similar to Habitat for Humanity, College and Wharton sophomore Sakina Zaidi.
College freshman Davida Shiff said they spent most of the week stripping a house that had been almost completely devastated by the storm.
The students were "completely decked out in overalls," Zaidi said, adding that it was a "pretty powerful experience with a lot of real people involved."
"It almost felt like ruins," said Howard who, as a Christian, was the only non-Jew or non-Muslim on the trip. "Literally, the swamp is taking back some of the land down there."
But the excursion was more than just a community-service trip. The students also took part in a variety of interfaith dialogues.
Howard said the dialogues were "very rich. [The students] listened well and engaged each other well . I think the students appropriately recognized differences, as well as common ground."
Uram explained that "the majority of the dialogue happened informally." People discussed issues late at night, on van rides and while working.
College and Wharton senior Samir Malik, a student organizer, said that forced dialogue was "something I wanted to stay away from." Instead, in each session the students were given a prompt, but "from there they took it to all kinds of different tangents."
Along with other controversial topics, the group discussed their religious identities and backgrounds, morally troubling passages from the Koran and the Old Testament and the influence of mass media on religion.
On Friday, the group attended both Muslim and Shabbat services. Malik explained that while watching the Jewish services, MSA students found out how similar the two services were.
But it wasn't all work and no play. The participants watched a documentary about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, went on a riverboat cruise, went out to dinners and to a jazz club and walked around New Orleans.
All involved agreed that the trip was a huge success. It was a "good opportunity for us to work together and to really give back to the community," Rashid said. "I can't see a better way of interacting with someone of a different faith than through service."
"It's really a step toward healing," Howard said. "Who knows what it will bring in the future."
