After graduation, most seniors are looking forward to stepping out into the real world alone.
But this summer a group of six seniors will travel to New Orleans to try to make a difference - together.
Inspired by an Urban Studies class that explores various models for revitalizing impoverished communities around the world, College senior Yasmin Radjy decided she wanted to turn her classroom lessons into reality down in the Big Easy.
She came together with five friends who also wanted to live and work in New Orleans for the next few years. The six will travel there right after graduation.
Radjy explained that while the broad goal of the group is to aid economic development in the city, it has no specific strategies thus far because they do not know the situation well enough yet to make an informed decision as to what would be best for the people of New Orleans.
"We want to get the lay of the land before we decide what we will be doing," she said. "For us to have a notion of what we're doing before going down wouldn't be the best idea."
Radjy and one of her classmates, College senior Lillian Wood, thought New Orleans would be the perfect location for the project. "It all kind of fused together into one big dialogue," Radjy said.
Over this past semester, Wood and Radjy have been doing an independent study with professor Andrew Lamas, who taught their Urban Studies class in the fall, to transform their initial idea into reality.
According to Wood, the two women are writing a manifesto-type essay for the course about New Orleans and the mission of the group. They also traveled to New Orleans just a few months ago to film a movie about how cooperative organizations can help rebuild the city.
College senior Nick Roosevelt, one of the six, said that he has been excited about moving to the city for the past couple of years. His mind was set on the idea even before he decided to become part of this particular group.
"I'd spent a summer down there two years ago," he said, adding that he "fell in love with the city."
One idea that the group has is to start a community land trust in New Orleans. The entire community would own the land in the neighborhood as an alternative means of home ownership and affordable housing.
"People can just buy the houses on top of the land for a fraction of the price," Wood said of the strategy. "The decisions are all very democratic because everybody owns the land."
However, Wood said she is not certain what will come of this idea. Right now in New Orleans, "it's really dangerous to try to get into anything that has to do with real estate because you don't know who you're screwing over."
College senior Katya Nick said the ideal situation would be to have all the group members living in one house.
But, she added, even if they don't live together, "there is still a sense of us keeping each other in check and being a family together."
"We have this momentum, we have energy," Wood said. "We have a really great background in [the issue], but we're just really under-prepared to say exactly what project we're going to start."
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