Champlain Today

Road Trip to New York

Champlain students can participate in road trips to cities like Montreal and Boston, but a recent trip to New York City took on an extra-special meaning for those involved.

The College had been planning a student trip to New York and then—suddenly and horrifically—came the events of September 11. The student planners came together, wondering if they should cancel the road trip. They gathered and soon decided to make some changes to the event. Instead of abandoning their trip to New York, they would make it more meaningful. They decided that before leaving campus, each student would raise money for the September 11th fund.

Then came the weekend extravaganza called “Operation NYC,” where the students divided into teams and completed quirky “missions” around the city for a chance to win a prize. The event was designed as a take-off of the television show Road Rules. About 25 students headed to the Big Apple on December 7.


	Champlain students ham it up in a New York City subway station.

“We saw more of the city in this one weekend than what I have seen on multiple trips to NYC,” said Student Activities Director Beth Fitzgerald ’78. “We posed for photos with celebrities from Guiding Light and Real World. We got 33 strangers to dance a chorus line in front of Rockefeller Center, 14 strangers to pack into a cab, and a restaurant owner in China Town to let us bus tables for 30 minutes. We also visited FAO Schwarz, bought a toy and brought it to the Today Show holiday toy collection box.”

Orlando Castro ‘03 said the weekend was a whirlwind of activity. “We skated at Rockefeller Center and Central Park, sang a couple of songs at the Strawberry Fields in memory of John Lennon and the Beatles, and walked around Times Square and 5th Avenue.”

He and his classmates also experienced a somber visit to the site of the World Trade Center. Castro, a Software Engineering student from Lima, Peru, had been to the towers before—actually standing on the observation deck on top about six years ago. “It was truly unbelievable. There were two huge buildings there before and then—nothing. It was sad to think how many lives were lost in that attack,” he said.

The students stood in the crowd that had assembled behind the fencing about two blocks from the site. “We saw trucks coming out with debris every five minutes,” Castro said.

When it came time for the group to name the winning team for the weekend competition, the students agreed -- all of the Operation NYC prize money would go to a fund for the victims of the September 11th attacks. They would add it to the donations they had gathered prior to the event. In all, these students donated nearly $1,500 to this cause.

“Their generosity really warmed my heart,” Fitzgerald said. “It was a very special weekend in New York.”