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With our uncommonly long, but delightfully relaxing, two-week spring break, Hamilton College offers a win-win opportunity for students who participate in Alternative Spring Break. Having two weeks for break allows students to spend one week lounging at home, binging on both good food and Netflix, or basking in the sun in some tropical location, and one week volunteering with ASB.
ASB is run out of the COOP, located on the third floor of the Chapel, and is watched over by Amy James, but ASB is incredibly reliant on its students. Unlike most schools, Hamilton sends its students on ASB trips without chaperon of any sort, which says much responsibility of the students who sign up for these trips. All trips are led by two student co-leaders and take around eight other volunteer students who have been chosen through an application process.
This year’s ASB trips sent out ten trips with ten students each, to locations such Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Trips can either be community service, construction, or environmental focused. The ASB application has students to rank these tree options by preference, allowing the ASB board to respond to participants’ interests.
All of the trips allow students the chance to make a difference through volunteer work, meet and bond with new students, and experience a different kind of spring break. One of the unofficial mottos of ASB seems to be that after eight plus hours in Jitney together, all ASB groups will inevitably bond, and it’s true. ASB offers students the unique opportunity to bond not only through long hours in the jitney, but also through rewarding days volunteering, nights cooking communal meals, and many unexpected antics – imagine interpretative dancing to One Direction in the wake of Zane’s tragic departure – throughout the week.
If you have always considered it, but haven’t gotten around to it yet, ASB is one of those quintessential Hamilton experiences you absolutely need to try for yourself.