Charitable Tulane Student Learns How to Receive

Charitable Tulane Student Learns How to Receive: "urham, N.C. -- During his time as a student at TulaneUniversity, Dwight Blass has volunteered with cancer patients, tutored elementary school students and helped an impoverished community center apply for grants.

Blass, a senior, who is one of more than 50 New Orleans-area students now enrolled at Duke, finds it ironic to be on the receiving end of others’ generosity.

“It took me three years to learn how to get things done, learning who to talk to, who to know, becoming a student leader,” he said. “Now I feel like a freshman again. It’s humbling.”

Blass couldn’t help but be impressed as he listened to Duke students and administrators describe at a meeting Tuesday the hurricane relief efforts going on at his new school.

“Duke is being very generous and very gracious,” said Blass, a 21-year-old economics major from Daytona Beach.

It has been a “surreal” two weeks for Blass. On Aug. 26, he returned early to Tulane to help freshmen move in to their dorm rooms and to recruit for CACTUS, the student-led community service group of which he is president.

One day later, he and the freshmen were told to leave behind most of their possessions in their rooms and to evacuate before Hurricane Katrina made landfall."