For Some RIT Students, Spring Break Is About Service—Not Just Fun

For a lot of students, spring break is about getting away from the stress and strain of school. But not for all—some use the time to earn spending money for the rest of the school year and others spend the time earnestly working in community service activities.

Sixteen students from Rochester Institute of Technology’s Intervarsity Christian Fellowship will volunteer in Guyana, South America, for spring break, March 1-9. They’ll help villagers dig wells for drinking water, distribute shoes, clothing and other supplies and teach literacy programs. The group will work with missionaries from Global Outreach.

RIT’s Habitat for Humanity club will travel to Mount Pleasant, S.C., working with the local East Cooper Habitat for Humanity group to frame and put siding on two houses.

Jennifer Farrin, trip organizer and second-year packaging science major, says that the group works on houses every Saturday with area habitat chapters. "Going to South Carolina over spring break is an opportunity not only for us to experience warmer weather but also to extend what we already do in Rochester and work with a different habitat chapter," she says.

For those students who are going to kick back on vacation, the trend this year is to go the cheap route and visit friends where they’ll have a free place to stay.

An informal survey of RIT students revealed the following spring break plans:

Visiting friends—29 percent

Going home—21 percent

Working—13 percent

Going on a package vacation outside the continental U.S. to somewhere warm—8 percent

Vacationing with family—8 percent

Volunteering or doing community service—5 percent

Other vacation plans—16 percent

For more information, contact Silandara Bartlett at 585-475-4948 or sjbcom@rit.edu.