Haiti Comes Home

“Pictures do not do the devastation justice.”

The first jolt came at just before 5:00 in the afternoon. It felt as if someone had kicked his mattress.

Mike Sanchez dropped what he was reading and cocked an ear. Having worked with munitions in the Army, he thought this might have been a shockwave and was anticipating the sound of an explosion.

Seconds later, there was another jolt, and then the apartment building started rocking back and forth. He jumped up and sprinted through the kitchen, calling to his wife, and they both ran down the stairs and outside where they watched in shock as U.N. vehicles bounced up and down in the parking lot.

Haiti’s devastating January 12 earthquake had struck.

Sanchez, a Deputy Regional Commander with the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti and a student in UC’s master of science program in criminal justice administration, was sent to Haiti in May 2009 because of his extensive administrative experience. Dispatched to the Les Cayes region instead of the mission headquarters in Port Au Prince, he had not been pleased with his posting but now believes that it may well have saved his life. The earthquake flattened the main U.N. facility, killing many, including Sanchez’s colleague Douglas Coates, a Canadian police commissioner stationed at the headquarters building.

“Doug was a wonderful man and a good friend of mine,” Sanchez says. “If I had gotten the position I’d wanted, I would have been right there with him.”

The reports that came in from the capital were, in Sanchez’s words, horrific beyond belief.

“I drove through Port Au Prince in the weeks following the quake, and pictures do not do the devastation justice,” says Sanchez. “Even at that point, there were so many dead that they were clearing the bodies from the streets with earth-moving equipment.”

Haiti’s earthquake was felt strongly in communities all over the world, including the residence halls of Utica College.

Monique Sidberry ’11, a criminal justice major and an R.A. in North Hall, started receiving late-night knocks on her door as soon as students returned from Winter break. “Three of my residents were directly affected by it,” she says. “Sometimes the best thing to do is to just sit there and listen, let them vent, and then they can go on about their day.”

But she and some of her fellow R.A.’s felt moved to do more. On the first Tuesday of Spring semester, Sidberry met with students Martine Samson and Darven Dodard as well as Assistant Director of Student Activities Maureen Murphy and Residence Life Secretary Monica Brown-Hodkinson to coordinate a community response to this catastrophe.

During the first week in February, the group put on a benefit pub night in the Pioneer Café. Director of Student Activities Paul Lehmann and others supplied items for a silent auction, and $550 was raised in four hours. Donations for Haitian relief came pouring in from students, faculty, and staff even after the event had ended. “It seemed like every time I turned around, Maureen was saying that somebody gave her $10 or $20 for Haiti,” Sidberry says.

The group also held a candlelight vigil on campus. Many spoke at the gathering, including Kennia Vernard, who was in Haiti during the earthquake and whose family had been deeply affected. Samson, who is also of Haitian descent, read a poem she had written titled Ayiti Cherie.

Many chose instead to write their thoughts on a “Reflection Wall” organizers posted in Ellen Knower Clarke Lounge. Others scribbled impressions on sheets of paper and tossed them into a box that was later burned at the vigil. “(Assistant Director of Residence Life) Elizabeth Hartzell came up with that idea,” says Sidberry. “It’s a way of letting your thoughts go. We found different ways for people to express their feelings, and students, faculty, and staff took the time to show their support.”