Bowdoin's common good spread a little farther than normal in the last few weeks as the McKeen Center fielded another successful series of Alternative Spring Break trips.
Eight groups of approximately 10 students each embarked on week-long excursions to assist various national and international community service organizations.
The sites included a wide range of locations, from as close as New Jersey, to more exotic locales such as New Orleans and Guatemala.
Junior Jordan Francke led a trip to Washington D.C. with fellow Junior Mariya Ilyas and characterized the experience as having gone "extremely well" and "better than expected."
The trip to D.C. focused mainly on homelessness in the metropolitan area, and the participants volunteered in a variety of shelters and attended talks with politicans and others who are working to combat homelessness from a public-policy related perspective.
The group was even able to meet with current Maine senator Olympia Snowe and discuss numerous topics including the Keystone XL pipeline, federal assistance programs, education initiatives, and Snowe's recent decision to resign.
"We ended up talking to her for about 45 minutes, until her staff told her to leave," said Francke, who was not expecting to talk to the senator at all at the beginning of the trip.
The group also participated in a program called Street Sense that produces a magazine that sells for a dollar and features content from local homeless authors and artists, who receive the profits.
Francke said that he thought the Bowdoin group "got the most out of this because it gave a perspective on how it feels to be ignored."
Some Alternative Spring Break participants, however, did not feel as positive as Francke about the focus of their trip.
One student, who wishes to remain anonymous, said that he wished that his week-long trip to West Virginia had involved less manual labor and instead more time understanding the issues of the area, which include widespread poverty and drug depedence.
The group visited some coal mines and spent most of their time helping to renovate a building that used to be a school.
"We are not construction workers," said the student, who mentioned that it often felt that they were inhibiting the building project rather than advancing it.
"I do wish there had been less hours of actual service and more community involvement and cross-cultural understanding," said the student.
"Education and awareness is more important. I didn't learn as much as I could have," he added.
West Virginia trip leaders, Melanie Gaynes '13 and Sasha Davis '13 said that they did try to incorporate some cultural awareness into the trip.
"The organization we worked with is set up as a service organization. They plan days for us to be doing construction work or they also have home rehabs. We did intend for this trip to be service focused. We tried our best to integrate some education. We visited a mountaintop removal and learned about the coal mining there," Gaines said.
"The McKeen Center gets it right when they explain the trips as service learning. That's how we approached the trip when we were planning it. It just happened to be more hands-on service," Davis added.
Although in past years many of the trip leader spots have gone to seniors, Francke and Ilyas, along with Gaynes and Davis, were among six juniors who led trips this year. There were also two sophomore leaders.
Sarah Seames, the senior associate director for the McKeen Center and ASB trip director, confirmed that the program "had more non-senior leaders this year than past years."
The McKeen Center reviewed 120 participant applications this year, slightly fewer than years past, when applications usually totaled around 130 or 135. With just 83 spots available, the process was competitive.
According to Seames, the lower turnout is perhaps due in part to the new weighted lottery system, which was implemented last year.
The weighted lottery system "gives preference to people that have applied and not gotten on," said Seames, making it a lot less likely to get on a trip a second or third time.
There are a few other factors that influence the lottery, such as diversity of gender and class year. In previous years, selection was based solely on an essay-based application.
The McKeen Center is already planning and organizing next year's trips.
"There is a misperception that it is just a week," said Seames, "but there is a lot of lead up, educational components, prep work, and getting to know each other as a group."
There will be an informational meeting this upcoming Tuesday, April 3 at 5 p.m. for students interested in proposing and leading trips.