I feel that Loyola University’s students are in a unique situation after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina more than ever before. We now have the opportunity and privilege of helping a city rebuild, a city that the Jesuits have been connected to for quite some time – if only we could employ the gift of perspective.

While I do realize the impact that we are able to make, I cannot help but feel as if the gravity of the situation has been lost on some students in the bubble that I call Loyola. Within this bubble, life is “perfect” and the devastation of Lakeview, the Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans East and other ravaged areas might as well have happened in a foreign country.

I also know that there are many people and organizations on campus that are dedicated to helping rebuild New Orleans and the lives of those who were affected by this tragedy, but sometimes I stand in the quad and wonder if students really grasp the seriousness of what happened here in New Orleans. As our lives went on at other universities, the lives of those who lived in this city and the surrounding areas were turned upside-down. Families were displaced – uprooted from everything and everyone that they knew – and lost what they worked their whole lives to gain.

We viewed our time away as if it were a vacation or new experience, while the lives of New Orleanians are forever changed. I encourage you to put things into perspective and to try, just for a moment, to place yourself in the shoes of those who lost everything.

Your 8 a.m. class or the long lines in the Orleans Room are minute compared to being airlifted off your rooftop by helicopter for fear of drowning.

According to the Rev. Peter Kolvenbach, S.J., “Now more than ever we are called to be men and women who reflect on the reality around us with all its ambiguities, opportunities and challenges, in order to discern what is really happening in our lives and the lives of others, to find God there and discover where God is calling us, to employ criteria for significant choices that reflect godly values rather than narrow exclusive self-interest, to decided in the light of what is truly for the greater glory of God and the service of those in need, and then to act accordingly.”

This is our call as students of a Jesuit university. Let it not fall on deaf ears.

David Robinson-Morris is a communications senior from Galveston, Texas.