Dean of Undergraduates John Hutchinson sent this message to students Wednesday night.

Dear Rice Students:

I write to invite you to join a great initiative created by the SA, GSA, Center for Civic Leadership and the Doerr Institute, the Rice Harvey Action Team, R-HAT. Hurricane Harvey’s downpour was no match for the outpouring of civic pride and volunteerism from you! Rice students in huge numbers have been volunteering and many more are looking for opportunities to volunteer. Those of us in and around the Rice campus know that we have been incredibly fortunate in avoiding the major damage of the storm. But hundreds of thousands of Houstonians, including hundreds of members of our Rice community, have not been so lucky. There is much work to be done, and I have been inspired by the number of you who have stepped up to take on that work.

To facilitate and support your opportunities to help the people of our city, R-HAT is a means to match volunteers to specific community needs. Rice is identifying specific locations where there are needs in the community. You can register as an R-HAT volunteer. Using the program’s volunteer registration, Rice will match student volunteers to opportunities.

You can register for R-HAT at http://ricesa.org/hurricane-harvey/.

I know that many of you have been volunteering independently, and I applaud your work. Well done! Now that we have a working system, we strongly encourage all students who wish to volunteer to go through the R-HAT portal. This approach will be much more effective for the agencies who need your help, as we can manage numbers and timing for them. And when you are working with R-HAT, Rice can help prepare you to be the most effective in your work. Please, us the portal rather than act independently.

I want to emphasize that R-HAT is an opportunity for those who want to volunteer, with no expectation for anyone that you need to or must volunteer. Volunteering to help in very difficult circumstances with people who have suffered traumatic losses may not be for everyone. We have created this program because we know that there are very many people who do want to volunteer, not because we expect everyone to volunteer.

Best wishes,
Dean Hutch