Students connect with Vietnam

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2014/04/14/students-connect-vietnam/7682619/
Travis Atwater and Jaime Morrill grew up in Irondequoit and are graduating this spring with social work degrees from The College at Brockport.
But their college experience has taken a global turn, with both of them completing their schooling this semester more than 8,300 miles away in Da Nang, Vietnam, as participants in the Brockport Vietnam Program.
The program — established 15 years ago — is unusual in several respects. It is known as the oldest program connecting a college in the United States with Vietnam. And unlike most college study abroad programs, Brockport's program actually has the students work with local population.
In Vietnam, this takes on added importance because of the legacy of bloodshed left by the Vietnam War.
Both Atwater, 28, and Morrill, 23, are too young to have a memory of this war that engulfed Vietnam and divided the American public over the U.S.'s military involvement in this Southeast Asian nation.
The scars of war, however, became readily apparent when, as part of their fieldwork, they conducted their first home visit.
Bedridden was a frail 25-year-old man whose father, according to Atwater, had been exposed to Agent Orange, the toxic defoliant — linked to birth defects, cancer and various disabilities — that was widely sprayed by U.S military aircraft to destroy the jungle foliage that opposition forces used for cover.
"He was like a vegetable on a bed," said Morrill during a recent long-distance interview via Skype with her and Atwater.
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