Not all students traveling this spring break will be hitting the
beach.

Twelve groups from Saint Louis University will disperse to
various locations in North America on mission trips. The trips are
planned through the Campus Ministry program Saint Louis University
Christian Action Program, commonly known as SLUCAP.

“Students go away from St. Louis and work with organizations
that work for social change for people on the margins of society,”
said Harry O’Rourke, the campus minister in charge of the program.
“We try to gather a sense of community with the people we live with
and work with.”

The students will spend the week working at various locations
such as a L’Arche community for the developmentally disabled, a
soup kitchen and homeless shelter, tutoring center for
at-risk-children, and working with immigrants.

These students’ destinations include the Texas-Mexico border;
Phoenix; the Bronx; Detroit; West Virginia; Mexico; El Salvador;
New Orleans; Chicago; and Mobile, Ala.

“SLUCAP itself is a program of Campus Ministry that has a
purpose to help students come to an understanding of the seeming
discourse of God and wanting the world to live in dignity,”
O’Rourke said.

“Our methodology is an immersion experience of direct service,”
said O’Rourke. The next step is one of social analysis; while it is
important to feed those who are hungry; if we don’t work for social
change then they will still be hungry.”

“SLUCAP is founded on four different principles, the first is
theology. These are mission trips, we are brought to places of
social inequality,” O’Rourke said. “The second is social justice.
We are not only working on volunteering but to make our world a
better place.”

“The third principle is simple living. This takes an approach to
the struggle alongside the people we are working with as children
of God. The fourth principle is community. I think this is the
heart of our experience. As a church, we don’t do this ourselves,
but as a church we stand alongside and walk with those who we are
there to serve. Jesus sent his disciples two by two, not
alone.”

SLUCAP also sponsors other events throughout the school year on
campus.

Every Saturday morning SLUCAP hosts local service trips, and in
the beginning of the fall semester they sponsor the Urban Plunge
retreat.

O’Rourke is not sure when SLUCAP was started. “It goes back as
far as the memory of anyone I have ever talked to. It has been
around for at least 30 years,” he said.

“When I came here, I was able to expand the program because I
was the first person to work on peace and justice on a full-time
basis,” O’Rourke said. “In the years before I came, there were six
groups, and I was able to expand these trips and expand the issues
of social justice.”

O’Rourke was able to expand the program from having about 40
student participants when he started at SLU, to 112 participants
this year.

SLUCAP has previously gone to all of the locations that SLU will
be traveling to.

“We do evaluations of the trips, to see if the experience is
what we want to have. Every trip we have has gotten great reviews
from the students who have gone,” O’Rourke said.

This is the second year SLUCAP will travel to El Salvador. They
will visit sites where Jesuit priests and nuns were murdered in the
country, and learn about Oscar Romero, S.J., and his works in the
impoverished country.

“Almost without exception, students come back from these trips
with another understanding of who they are and how God is calling
them to do works of justice,” O’Rourke said.

“These trips are an integral part of our Jesuit university,”
O’Rourke said. “Our mission says, ‘Pursuit of truth for the greater
glory of God and for the service of humanity.’ That is not a
throw-away line. We are to realize that our knowledge and
understanding in the classroom are needed in the world. In the
mission statement of the University we say we go about our
education and service in order to fill the world with the gospel
values of human dignity, social justice and to promote human values
and fundamental dignity. Service to people is at the heart of the
Society of Jesus.”