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Two more bodies from the Lynn University group in Haiti during the earthquake have been identified, school officials announced Friday: student Stephanie Crispinelli, 19, of Katonah, N.Y., and Patrick Hartwick, 53, dean of the Ross College of Education. They were part of a group of 14 who were staying in the Hotel Montana in Port-au-Prince, which collapsed after the Jan. 12 earthquake. Eight students escaped uninjured. Two others had earlier been confirmed dead.
Lynn University officials said Thursday that the U.S. Department of State notified the family of Christine Gianacaci that she has been found. Christine was a sophomore from Hopewell, N.J. Her body was found in the rubble of the Hotel Montana in Port-au-Prince. According to the university, 14 people from the school were in Haiti on a trip to provide food for the poor when the magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck.
Lynn University officials say the U.S. Department of State contacted the family of 23-year-old Courtney Hayes Wednesday to confirm the young woman's death. Two faculty members and three students from the university remain missing. Hayes' body was found in the wreckage of the Hotel Montana in Port-au-Prince. The missing students and professors were also inside the hotel when the earthquake struck.
For hundreds of Haitian college students in the United States, the past few weeks have been a torment as they've viewed the devastation from afar, waiting to learn if their relatives in Haiti survived and how they're coping. Some who may have considered leaving school to return home are daunted by the conditions in Haiti. And some have heard from their families that they should stay where it's safe and where they can do the one thing that could make a difference in the future - get an education.
Among those affected by the disaster are students from Haiti at American colleges and universities who are cut off from their families in Haiti and, in many cases, from the financial support the families provided. To help these students, the Institute of International Education (IIE) has created Haiti-Emergency Assistance for Students (EAS) grants. These grants provide financial assistance to citizens of Haiti who are undergraduate and graduate students at accredited U.S. colleges and universities.
As heavy machinery rumbled over the remains of the Hotel Montana in Haiti's capital, Lynn University's president acknowledged Wednesday the deaths of four students and two professors missing in the rubble. Lynn University students and faculty, along with the families of the missing, hoped for two weeks that at least some of them would be found alive. But 15 days after the Port-au-Prince hotel toppled in the massive Jan. 12 earthquake, Lynn University President Kevin Ross said Wednesday that all hope seemed lost.
College students have rallied around Haiti relief efforts with their own events, proving their talent for fundraising and mass mobilization. In fact, one college, in particular, serves as a powerful example of these efforts. Within days of the Haiti earthquake, Dartmouth College students came together to form Students at Dartmouth for Haiti Relief, and set an impressive fundraising goal of $100,000 for Partners In Health, a Haiti relief organization that provides medical supplies and treatment.
Throughout Port au Prince, institutions of higher learning collapsed on themselves, burying students and faculty members alike. In addition to the University of Port-au-Prince, various locations of the faculties of the State University of Haiti - the nation's main public university - and a host of other institutions were terribly damaged. One focal point was the University of Port-au-Prince, largely serving the striving lower-middle class, whose members exist one step up the economic ladder from the nation's impoverished majority.
American colleges and universities have responded overwhelmingly in their efforts to offer humanitarian support to the people affected by the Haiti earthquake. Colleges and universities reacted speedily and effectively across the US. Students and academics are raising money to help support the relief efforts and offering support to students of Haitian descent in the US. They have also mobilised affiliated medical and military professionals to assist in bringing aid to an estimated three million people.
"What we've been seeing are just many, many, many patients, a lot of orthopedic injuries, a lot of open fractures that are infected," Brian W. Loggie, a professor of surgery at the Creighton University School of Medicine, said in a telephone interview. While many American colleges are providing financial assistance to Haiti, some, like Creighton, have sent teams of nurses and surgeons. These universities have longtime connections to aid work in Haiti and were able to quickly dispatch doctors in the days following the quake.
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