The Sundial welcomes in another semester and wishes the CSUN community the best of luck this spring. Preparing to crash courses, buy your books and parking passes are all a part of the annoying process. And just a reminder to those who are freshmen and sophomores: the nagging budget cuts will only get worse before they get better.

School can be stressful and overwhelming at times. There are times during the semester when it feels it is dominating our lives. What a pain in the neck. I bet there is one place that would trade it all to have these petty little problems.

Here’s a little dose of perspective fellow students and faculty:

Haiti, a country in the West Indies, might not even have a school standing after a catastrophic earthquake leveled the country.

Last Tuesday a 7.0 earthquake struck the Caribbean island and sent the capital city of Port-au-Prince into a state of pain and chaos immeasurable to anything most of us have experienced.

The hardest of times haunt each and every one of us at some of the most unpredictable times, but this happened to more than 3 million people at once. There are tens of thousands unaccounted for while families, friends and workers race against time to save those trapped in the rubble.

Images show the injured and displaced sharing the same slab of broken concrete with decomposing bodies piling up throughout the city. This is not a way that any of us would ever imagine living. The thought, if it ever occurs, usually ends abruptly with you waking up in a cold sweat and state of panic thanking the god you do or don’t believe in that it was just a nightmare.

Water, food, medicine and sanitary conditions are near extinction for this poverty-stricken country. Help has arrived in large numbers, but it is still not enough to expedite the cleanup and lifesaving process that has barely scratched the surface.

Each one of us can make a difference. Send money, food or water. Technology has made it extremely easy to donate. You can do so via text, Web sites, or social networks in a matter of minutes. We would wish for endless help from all corners of the world if this happened in L.A.

We can help Haiti from Northridge.

When you think things are at their worst, think of Haiti and their very real version of hell. We don’t have it so bad.

Unsigned editorials represent the majority view of the Sundial editorial board and are not necessarily those of the journalism department. Other views on the opinions page are those of the individual writer.