Clarkson Integrator

Issue date: 11/7/05 Section: News

At the New Visions student summit, students from a number of schools came to discuss different ways they could improve on New Orleans if it was going to be rebuilt. Three students from Clarkson University were accepted to attend the event.

What do you do when you are posed with an enormous question such as, "How would you rebuild or fix the city of New Orleans?" College students throughout upstate New York tackled that very topic and issue at New Visions, New Cities: New Orleans Student Summit on the weekend of October 28.

Colleges that were invited to attend the summit held at Savannah Dhu, in Clyde, New York, included Clarkson University, Cornell University, Ithaca College, Onondaga Community College, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF), and Syracuse University. The Clarkson University student representatives accepted to go were Adam Taddonio, Liz Urban, and Jimmy Farese. Although most of the students present were representative of Syracuse University, there was a large variety of students with different backgrounds besides engineering, as well as a number of grad students and undergrads of every year.

The press release for the summit states, "Syracuse University and Destiny USA invite students to share visions for New Orleans as a blueprint for the 21st century." The benefit to having a student summit is the ability to have a younger, fresh generation tackle issues and hopefully come up with new innovative ideas. Each of the schools brought a wealth of diversity, including school background as well as ethnic background, which provided a good range of ideas and thoughts during the conference.

Approximately 45 students were present, among representatives of Destiny USA, Syracuse University, Microsoft, and Cisco, among others. The summit itself was primarily student-led; however, representatives of different companies and guest speakers, such as Mayor Marc Morial, the former mayor of New Orleans, helped to inspire the students and give them some initial background on certain issues.

Students arrived on Friday evening and, after a short reception to break the ice and meet some other of the students, the summit participants were quickly put to work. Sitting at long tables seating four each, the students listened to a speaker, Rev. Dr. Thomas V. Wolfe, Dean Hendricks Chapel, of of Syracuse University, in order to bring up the topic concerning "Communities, Traditions, and Connections: Personal Cities." The lecture was followed by an interactive session to get the participants involved in the thought process and start bringing up ideas and questions that hopefully would be answered throughout the weekend.

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