Out-of-state spring breakers give Fort Hill a spring cleaning

More than 40 college students from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and Boston University came to Macon this week. They are on spring break, but you won’t see them doing anything normally associated with college spring break.

No beach. No booze.

“Sometimes you just want to get out and see something real,” said Elizabeth Hartmann, an 18-year-old freshman from Miami University.

Hartmann enlisted for Miami University’s Alternative Spring Break program. She and her classmates are here at the invitation of Rebuilding Macon, a nonprofit organization geared toward rebuilding homes for elderly people.

The 33 Miami University and 13 Boston University students have painted a Macon community center and a home and have picked up roadside trash and raked leaves.

Last year, Joshua Frasure, a 19-year-old sophomore from Miami University, went to Panama City Beach, Fla., to “talk about Jesus.”

“Now we’re actually doing something (in the community),” he said.

The living conditions for this week probably pale in comparison to their dorm rooms.

For the Miami University group of the students, they were given an open area of Elias Community Church to bivouac.

The Boston University students slept in sleeping bags in the Rebuilding Macon offices, said the nonprofit’s Executive Director Debra Rollins.

Nobody complained.

“We drove about 30 hours,” said Laura Minella, a Boston University sophomore, the coordinator of the trip. “It’s a 12-person van for 11 people,” she added, with the luggage taking the space of the extra seat.

Minella didn’t need to ask anyone to join her in the ride to Macon.

The Boston University Alternative Spring Break may be among the primary option for many of its 18,000 students.

The school sends several hundred students to 35 different locations across the United States for their alternative spring break.

To join along for a trip, students had to sign up online within the first few minutes of the tickets being available.

After four minutes, the tickets were sold out.

“It’s an opportunity to see a new place,” said Natasha Gacinski, a senior at Boston University from New York City. “Macon is not a place I would see normally.”

The college students will leave this weekend, but about 250 high school students from across Georgia will be taking their place.

This is not the first time Rebuilding Macon has rounded up a group of college students to help rebuild Macon. Boston University has sent a group the past six years.

Central Michigan University, Georgia Tech and the University of Wisconsin also have sent teams to lend a hand in previous years.

To contact writer Thomas L. Day, call 744-4489.