Hurricane Katrina Response and Recovery
First-hand accounts of flooding brought immediacy to the "Hurricane Katrina Response and Recovery" session on October 30, with reports by staff of universities in New Orleans and elsewhere.
Xavier University dean of admissions Winston Brown described the coming of the winds and floods, originally expected to hit Florida, and the total breakdown of communications in the first days at his campus in New Orleans. With students and faculty already in class, the mandatory shutdown was heart wrenching. Without a regular communications system, Dean Brown set up a personal Yahoo account, which rapidly turned into the main fulcrum for the entire university.
Moderator Nancy McDuff leads off the discussion.
"We thought the hurricane would come and just knock down a few trees," he said. "But it took nearly everything." As a result, the admissions staff cannot show new applicants their campus. Dean Brown expects his institution to lose as much as 50 percent of its students because of emotional trauma and other factors. "So we thank the institutions that have taken them in."
Although she has been forced to live in five different cities since the start of the disaster, Debbie Stieffel, dean of admissions and enrollment management at Loyola University, also in New Orleans, was remarkably optimistic and said the situation was not as dire for her institution because classes hadn't started when the disaster hit and campus buildings fared relatively well. On the other hand, 60 percent of the faculty lost their homes. She said she expected Loyola's campus to reopen in January and added that Tulane's would as well.
Stieffel is grateful to those who have reached out to Loyola's displaced students, praising the "many schools that have taken our kids for no fees. And she expressed deep appreciation for Loyola's president who has promised to pay everyone's salary this year. Loyola hopes for a 75 percent return of its students.
Jim Martin, dean of admissions and enrollment management from Pensacola Community College, spoke with the understanding of someone who had been through such disasters more than once. He witnessed the devastation wrought upon Florida by Hurricane Ivan in 2004 and Hurricane Dennis in 2005: "We suffered $11 million worth of damage from Ivan alone."
(from left) Jim Martin, Debbie Stieffel, Winston Brown
When 800 students lost their homes and had to relocate, Pensacola refunded all their fees "because they really needed the money." He predicts that those students will not be able to come back for three years.
The panel's moderator, Nancy McDuff, associate vice president of admissions and enrollment management, from the University of Georgia, reminded everyone, "When students go home for the holidays, wherever home is now, it's going to be very hard for them." The trauma these students have suffered has prompted her university to go the extra mile; often admitting displaced students who have no papers at all.
In the end, Debbie Stieffel said, "The revitalization of New Orleans is going to be difficult, but it will come back. Higher education will come back and if higher education comes back, the city will come back."
