SMU Student Senate initiates earthquake relief program for Haiti

By Brooks Powell
Staff Writer

Student Body President Patrick Kobler, along with seniors Nicola Muchnikoff and Rachel Carey, unveiled a proposal at Tuesday’s emergency Student Senate meeting. The proposal enacts a two-week-long fundraising drive to assist with relief efforts in the earthquake-ravaged island nation of Haiti.

The program, titled “SMU’s Heart Beats for Haiti,” will encompass all campus student groups and academic units, which Kobler said he hopes to unite in this effort.

“I felt that we, as the Student Senate, leaders of the student body—it’s our responsibility to coordinate and organize a collective relief effort to take place in the next two weeks to send aid to Haiti,” Kobler said.

Referencing recent reports of the death toll in the region, Kobler said the estimated 200,000 fatalities are unfathomable in normal terms.

“I started thinking of ways to interpret the number ‘200,000’ and I thought, that’s more days than any of us have lived, more miles than are on any of our cars, more dollars than any of us have paid to go to school here, and [the number] really shocked a lot of us,” he said.

Donations will be collected by campus organizations and will be deposited into a new account with the Students’ Association Comptroller located within the office of Student Activities and Multicultural Student Affairs on the third floor of the Hughes-Trigg Student Center.

The money raised at SMU will be sent en masse to the Clinton-Bush Foundation; a non-profit organization set up by former U.S. President’s Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to address the recent disaster in Haiti.  In May of last year, Clinton was named the United Nations special envoy to Haiti with the purpose of helping the impoverished nation establish and maintain stability and infrastructure after a number of crises in recent years.

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