Students Assist Red Cross Effort

A week after Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast, the Harvard Red Cross kicked off a fundraiser Sunday with the goal of raising one thousand dollars for hurricane victims.

According to Victoriya Levina ’14, co-president of the Harvard Red Cross, the funds will be spent on various relief efforts, like “providing pillows, blankets, and meals for people that have been displaced from their homes.”

Donations to the group are tax-deductible and will go directly to the American Red Cross.

“We want to get as many people as possible to donate as much as they can,” Levina said. “A lot of times people are hesitant because they feel that what they can donate won’t make much of a difference, but if everyone in the Harvard community donated a dollar we would be able to exceed our goal.”

Levina noted that the drive received 196 hits within six hours of launching the on Causes.com, a website that facilitates fundraising.

Although Boston escaped the worst of Sandy, the storm took a serious toll on many students’ families

Rachel E. Halperin ’16, from Scarsdale, New York, said she thought her family was lucky it only lost power for a week.

According to Halperin, although the power is back, a continuing lack of gas means her family’s home still does not have heating.

Ryan A. Neff ’13 retured home to northern New Jersey last Sunday to be with his family when the storm hit.

“I was in New Jersey because my family wanted to be together during the hurricane,” he said. “I taped up windows, stocked up on flashlights, batteries, food, and four days worth of water.”

Neff, a native New Jersey resident, said he had never seen anything like Sandy.

“The winds were ferocious, and it wasn’t just that we had high sustained winds of 50 miles per hour, but you would stick your head out the window a few times just to see what was going on, and the wind would smack back your face and knock over everything in your room.”

As the families of many Harvard students continue to cope with the storm’s destruction, Levina hopes members of the Harvard community will contribute to the Harvard Red Cross fundraiser.

“[Students] can really make a difference in the efforts to help people who have been affected,” she said. “Even if we don’t know those who were affected by the hurricane, it’s still our job to help those in need.”