LSU Students in Diaspora

BATON ROUGE, La.—The line stretched along the hallway, up the stairs, and around the corner in Pleasant Hall, a Louisiana State University (LSU) building commandeered to process the thousands of students who, some without homes and all without colleges, would join LSU for a semester.

They came from affluent suburbs and from the poorest parts of the Ninth Ward, homes far up north and homes levelled to the bare concrete foundation, but all were faced with the same immediate questions: how to secure a dorm room on an overflowing campus, find extra-long sheets, and pick classes to fulfill the requirements of their empty New Orleans schools. Hurricane Katrina has made them freshmen for the second time.

More than 30 colleges and universities have been damaged by Hurricane Katrina, with as many as 100,000 students displaced, according to a Sept. 2 statement by the American Council on Education. Many of the affected schools, including Tulane University, the University of New Orleans (UNO), Xavier University, and Dillard University, have closed for at least the fall semester, though UNO plans to offer electronic classes in October, according to the school’s website. Hundreds of colleges and universities across the country have opened their doors to the displaced students, letting them enroll with visiting status until their own battered campuses reopen.

Monica Clark, a senior and the UNO student body president, was handed a piece of paper with a scrawled number—4212—to set her apart from the thousand or so students taking refuge at LSU from colleges throughout New Orleans. They would all leave with LSU ID’s, their passports for a semester’s study.

“Here nobody cares who you are,” Clark said, holding a course guide close. “I’m like, ‘I’m the [student government] president.’ They’re like, ‘Who cares?’”

As Clark weaved through the line, another UNO student nodded to her. Clark had completed one week at UNO before she left the city with a friend, getting thrills from driving on the wrong side of I-10 during the harried weekend evacuation. She stopped at her parents’ home in Baton Rouge; other students checked into refugee shelters or found shelter with relatives across the country. Days later she was seeking an application at LSU, a sprawling public school far larger than UNO, which hosted only 1,700 students, 80 percent from New Orleans.

UNO professors had also come calling at LSU. Between 20,000 and 25,000 faculty and staff members at institutions throughout New Orleans have been displaced, said Tony Pals, director of public information for the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. Harvard Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby wrote in an e-mail last week that Harvard libraries and other facilities are open to faculty and staff members from affected schools.

While many of the students at UNO had lost homes and family incomes, students from outside of the city had more options. Tulane junior Natalie McKay—who had planned to drive to school the Sunday before the hurricane but stayed in New York after hearing the weather predictions—has arranged to study abroad in London through a Syracuse University program this semester.

McKay said that when she called New York-area schools in the first few days after Hurricane Katrina, the schools refused to let her take classes.

“We called Fordham, we called NYU, everyone said no,” she said.

But soon offers were pouring in. “A couple days later, all my friends from other schools started calling me...I had all these options,” she said. Since McKay had wanted to study abroad this year and hadn’t had a chance to arrange it through Tulane, she chose the London program.

Some universities hosting students are covering tuition, room, board, and book expenses, Pals said. Meanwhile, the affected schools will use tuition dollars already collected from students this semester to begin the rebuilding process.

“Tuition is paid anywhere from 30 to 90 days before the beginning of the semester, so they do have dollars in hand for this semester....The key will be making sure that these institutions are able to draw enough students back to help pick up the financial costs for the rest of the year, once the semester is open,” Pals said. He added that he thinks the majority of students will return to their home institutions.

Other students have chosen not to look for other schools for the semester but to take jobs or internships. Monisha Sujan, who evacuated New Orleans with her family at 4 a.m. on the Sunday before Hurricane Katrina hit, had just completed her undergraduate degree at Tulane and was planning to start graduate studies there. Suddenly, she was left without recourse.

“People are still trying to figure it out,” Sujan said.

But Sujan cashed in on a job offer promised her this summer. Now Sujan will work for Democracy for America, a Democratic group led by former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean’s brother in Vermont, to help coordinate hurricane relief efforts until she and her parents—both faculty members at Tulane—are allowed to return to their home in the New Orleans neighborhood of Uptown.

But Sujan added that not everyone has the resources to try to find new schools or temporary jobs.

“The ones who the story’s really bad and depressing for are the ones who don’t have the money to go to school in the first place....We didn’t take care of the people who [we] really need to take care of, and who don’t really have any other place to go,” she said.

Some professors are also accepting visiting status or research positions at other schools while they wait for home institutions to reopen. Tulane Professor of History Lawrence Powell will be teaching a class entitled “New Orleans: An American Pompeii?” as a visiting professor at the University of Michigan.

Wandering past LSU’s monumental class halls and pink bougainvillea blossoms, Clark was optimistic about her coming semester at LSU.

And next semester she hopes she’ll return to UNO, a relatively tiny campus just south of Lake Pontchartrain. A few days before evacuation, Clark had taped in her student government office a poster of Rosie the Riveter who offers a tiny motto: “We can do it.”

—Staff writer Sara E. Polsky can be reached at polsky@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer April H.N. Yee can be reachec at aprilyee@fas.harvard.edu.