Entering a New Era of Multimedia - Lehman College

Jean Romulus (right), whose parents are
from Haiti, raised $170 selling red-and-blue
ribbons during Haiti Aid Week.
American occupation of the island from 1915 to 1934, the U.S.
government rewrote the Haitian Constitution to permit foreign investment,
seized peasants’ land, imposed martial law, and instituted
a program of forced labor to build roads.
“We hear a lot about deforestation as a result of the poverty in
Haiti,” said Professor Spear. “But the U.S. enhanced the practice.
The First World War was heating up, and Americans thought Haiti
would be a good place for rubber plantations.”
The United States also played a role in the coup against Jean-
Bertrand Aristide in 1991, which resulted in several years of
particularly harsh repression and a shutdown of Haitian industry.
and we were all
falling down.
Professor Spear encourages donations to organizations with longterm
experience on the ground in Haiti, such as Fonkoze.org, PIH.
org, MSF.org, Aprosifa.ning.com (public health), the DNL (Direction
Nationale du Livre), and fondam-haiti.org.
At the time of the earthquake,
Professor Spear was visiting with
the writer and editor Rodney
Saint-Éloi and Dany Laferrière, a
Haitian writer who has enjoyed
enormous success with his latest
novel (The Enigma of Return) and
who published an account of the
earthquake, Tout bouge autour
de moi, in March 2010. Laferrière
is pictured here with Emmelie
Prophète, also a writer and director
of the Direction Nationale du
Livre, the day before the earthquake,
in Prophète’s office in
Port-au-Prince. Laferrière’s wife,
Margaret Berrouët, is a Lehman
nursing graduate.
Students Organize to
Help Haiti
Members of the Lehman community came together to help Haiti in
the weeks and months following the earthquake.
In a session organized by the Division of Student Affairs, more
than forty students met the day after the quake and formed
Lehman Sauve Haiti (Lehman Save Haiti). Attending this initial
brainstorming session, Olu Onemola, a senior political science
major and member of Golden Key Honor Society, remembered
thinking that he had a choice: “Doing nothing, or doing something.”
Onemola, who came to the U.S. from Nigeria less than four years
ago, realized that students could galvanize attention around Haiti
by compressing fundraising events into one week. That’s how
HAWK—Haiti Aid Week—came about. Many campus organizations
participated in that week’s events.
Jean Romulus, a double major in health services administration and
economics, also attended that first planning meeting. “My parents
are from Haiti,” he said. “I feel it’s every human’s responsibility to
help others in despair.” Romulus’s ambition is to pursue graduate
work in public health—he interned this spring at Metropolitan
Hospital—and ultimately “to have a positive impact on the health of
as many people as possible.”
While attending an informational public meeting on the Haitian
emergency organized by State Senator Bill Perkins, he met and
invited Dr. Georges Casimir of Association des Medecins Haitiens
a l’Etranger (Association of Haitian Physicians Abroad) to speak
at Lehman during Haiti Aid Week. He also raised $170 by selling
commemorative red-and-blue ribbons that honored the Haitian flag.
On February 24, a candlelight vigil was held during Haiti Aid Week
to memorialize all those lost in the earthquake. Highlighting that
ceremony was a performance of La Dessalinienne, the Haitian
national anthem, by Manouche Jeanty, student service programmer
in Lehman’s Campus Association of Student Activities. Jeanty’s
parents were born in Haiti, and she was proud to sing the anthem
because “it is part of my culture”; she learned it specifically for the
vigil. The multiple activities of Haiti Aid Week generated more than
$1,100, including nearly $500 from a four-day campaign conducted
by the Minority Association for Pre-Health Students.
Additional individuals and groups also mounted assistance efforts.
Eric Harrison, the women’s basketball coach, collected $650 for
the Life Church of Allentown, Pa., whose Haitian orphanage was
destroyed in the earthquake. A February 21 concert, cosponsored
by the Lehman Department of Music and Lehman Stages, featured
the Lehman College Community Band and raised more than $800.
And the Kreyol Students Association, a new Lehman club dedicated
to the dissemination of Haitian culture at Lehman and other
CUNY schools, added over $300.
Altogether, in addition to clothing and supplies, more than
$2,850 was collected at Lehman and distributed to the
Red Cross and other organizations assisting in Haitian relief
and redevelopment efforts.
Lehman Today/Spring 2010 23