Megan Rollag, a 2L student at the University of Houston Law Center, helped fill a semitrailer full of relief items for flood victims in Nebraska.
April 10, 2019 — When second-year University of Houston Law Center student Megan Rollag saw her native Nebraska underwater, she used the severe weather event as an opportunity to give back.
Rollag, who is from Omaha, organized a supply drive with the help of the Student Bar Association and several local law firms. Items included bottled water along with canned and paper goods.
"I wanted to make sure that I was educating people about what was going on in Nebraska as well as sending supplies to people that needed it," Rollag said. "I think we all owe it to our community to give back when something like this happens, and there aren't a lot of networks for relief, so I wanted to really do something about it.
"It's important for law students and people involved in the legal community to get involved in any way possible. With Hurricane Harvey in 2017, Houston benefitted from that type of mindset from other people, so we should give back in the same way."
Parts of rural Nebraska were devastated by historic flooding in March. At least three people were killed and estimates indicate the flooding caused more than $1 billion in damage. Rollag hopes the supply drive brought awareness and exposure to a sparsely populated region of the country that can often be ignored by national relief services.
"It's important for people to know because this is a part of the country that generates a lot of revenue in the agricultural and livestock sectors," she said. "It's good for people to know because this will impact the way that they're living their lives. It could impact prices at the grocery store depending on where you live, and people should know that there's suffering in parts of the country, even if it’s a state that many people may never visit."
Rollag currently works as a law clerk at Baker Hughes and is interested in international energy law. She is the future chair of the Blakely Advocacy Institute's Alternative Dispute Resolution team. Before attending the Law Center, Rollag completed her undergraduate education at Baylor University with a focus on global studies.
