Spring break gives some at Southeast time to serve

Spring break conjures up MTV images of drunken college students cavorting on Florida or Texas beaches. But some Southeast Missouri State University students have other plans for their break from classes next week, ranging from working in a refugee center in south Texas to helping out in a homeless shelter in New Orleans.

"Not everybody is going to party," said Dan Frierdich, a 20-year-old junior from Belleville, Ill. He and six other students plan to spend their spring break helping construct a Habitat for Humanity house in a Kansas City, Kan., suburb.

Jenn Pruellage, a 21-year-old junior from St. Louis, plans to spend the week working in homeless shelters and soup kitchens in New Orleans.

"It gives you satisfaction knowing you are helping someone else. You just feel better," she said.

Last year, she and two girlfriends helped build a house for a poor family in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky. Two years ago, she helped out in a refugee shelter in Texas.

Pruellage is one of five students who will be making the trip to New Orleans with the Rev. J. Friedel of the Catholic Campus Ministry at Southeast.

It's one of two mission trips the organization is sponsoring this spring break.

This is the 10th year for the annual trek to La Posada Providence, a refugee shelter run by nuns in San Benito, Texas, not far from the Mexican border.

Eight students will be among a group of 11 Cape Girardeau area residents, including campus minister Leslie Coalter, who will make the two-day drive to south Texas.

"We live and work with the refugees for the week," said Coalter. "We prepare meals together. We do projects around the shelter. We work on their English, and they help us with Spanish."

The shelter, run by the St. Louis-based Catholic Sisters of Divine Providence, is set up to provide room and board for refugees awaiting hearings in immigration courts in the Rio Grande Valley.

The trip will include two visits to Mexico: One to a Catholic-run medical clinic in Matamoros, Mexico, and the other to deliver household goods, toys and school supplies to a dusty Mexican slum near the border where some families live in mud houses.

The Texas trip she took two years ago opened her eyes to the hard lives of refugees, Pruellage said. "I just got to see a different world down there."

The refugee shelter is only about an hour from South Padre Island, a popular beach destination for college students on spring break.

Pruellage and other students visited the beach one afternoon.

"We felt out of place," she said.

Working at home

Not everyone is going somewhere remotely exotic. Mike Rogers, a 20-year-old freshman from St. Louis, plans to spend spring break back home, installing siding and working at a sporting goods store.

Rogers said he couldn't afford to vacation in Florida. "I would like to go. I just don't have a lot of money this year," he said while attending a student health fair Wednesday at the University Center.

Michelle Comeau, a 19-year-old sophomore from St. Louis, plans to vacation in Daytona Beach, Fla., along with thousands of other college students from across America.

She's not worried about a place to stay. Her parents have rented a condominium.

"It will be fun," said Comeau, who plans to share the condominium with her parents part of the time and hang out on the beach.

Maggie McCaig, a 19-year-old freshman from Cape Girardeau, plans to visit friends in Louisiana.

"It's a place to go," McCaig said as she stood in line to get a free back massage at the health fair.

The fair featured health screenings and free spring break kits for students provided through the university's Center for Health and Counseling.

The university handed out 600 of the kits, which featured everything from Band-Aids to cups and key chains. The health center separately handed out 1,000 condoms.

Angie Steigenmeyer, a graduate assistant with the health center's Peer Education Association, said condoms used to be included in the spring break kits. Some students complained about the practice, so condoms now are made available separately.

The goal, she said, is to encourage students to behave responsibly and to have a safe spring break.

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123