The week Austin Kaplan started law school at the University of Illinois, a hurricane was ravaging the Gulf Coast. The devastation done by Katrina in August 2005, it turns out, would provide learning opportunities for him and fellow law school students that they could not have received in a lecture hall in Champaign. In January, Kaplan was one of 17 UI law students who traveled to New Orleans to help residents affected by the natural disaster. ... "Right after the hurricane, a group of law students got together from different schools and formed this coalition called the Student Hurricane Network. They do all kinds of social justice things related to the hurricane year-round. We send them a list of students coming down, and they find placements for them," said Jenny Carroll, who's organizing a Dec. 16-22 trip for 38 students. "I learned a lot, an incredible amount. It made me glad I was in law school," Eric
Sirota said, adding that he signed up at the last minute to make the
January trip. "It was pretty close to life-changing."