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BY REUBEN HEYMAN-KANTOR

In print | September 8, 2005

As Swarthmore searches for ways to help victims of Hurricane Katrina, for those students from the New Orleans area, the past two weeks have been more than a far-off tragedy being played out on television.

“I couldn’t reach my parents for the first three days,” New Orleans native Jessica Langston ‘08 said. Langston’s parents had evacuated to Houston, Texas, but because of storm-related problems with e-mail and telephone lines she had been unable to get in contact with them. “I have two friends who remained in the city. One I know is okay and one I haven’t heard from,” she said.

“One of my friends remained in the city with his mom because he knew his home would flood,” Langston said. “They had to loot a Save-a-Center to get water and batteries. They’re staying there, but they don’t have any running water or electricity or working sewage system.”

“there were a few days when I didn’t feel like doing anything,” Uma Nagendra ‘09, also of New Orleans, said. Since then, Nagendra’s family has been forced to relocate 80 miles northwest to Baton Rouge.

“When I first heard about it I thought, ‘oh it’s just a hurricane.’ In the past few years we’ve been really lucky. Hurricanes have missed us,” she said. “When it first hit I was most concerned for my friends. I had one friend who had decided not to leave.”

“I hadn’t been following it even when the storm was hitting,” Caitlin Koerber ‘08, another New Orleans resident, said. "Now that I know about it, I’m trying to avoid it. [Reading about it] is really stressful."

President Al Bloom announced Friday in a press release on the college’s Web site that Swarthmore will “welcome up to 15 students from institutions closed by the disaster in the Gulf region.”

“Schools are doing this all over the country,” Registrar Martin Warner said. “This is not unusual. I think it just became obvious we had to do it.”

While Swarthmore has agreed to welcome up to 15 students, it is more likely that only a few students will come. At press time, two new students, one from Tulane and one from Loyola had arrived on campus, according to Dean of Admissions Jim Bock ’90.

“We started receiving requests right after Hurricane Katrina [hit], asking would we be opening up any space,” Bock said. “This was a time-sensitive issue. We wanted to offer some space, but we’d already started classes. We didn’t want to put them into their classes [too far] behind academically.”

An important question for the college was whether to charge the students tuition. “If the student has already paid tuition [at their home institution], we will waive tuition,” Bock said. “If they have not paid tuition, they will pay tuition at the home institution price. In addition, because we are a small residential college, we felt it was important to offer the room and board option. We are charging for that,” he said.

Bock added that, as for all Swarthmore students, financial aid would be offered to visiting students for room and board on a need basis.

What will happen beyond the fall semester remains unclear. “We hope [colleges in the New Orleans area] are up and running by January, but we just don’t know yet,” Bock said.

Nikhil Sharma ‘09 is one of the displaced students who has moved onto campus. Sharma had been accepted by Swarthmore but chose to enroll at Tulane because of a scholarship offer. After a six-hour drive from Houston to New Orleans on Saturday, August 27 he found he was unable to move in. "We weren’t too aware Katrina was on its way," Sharma said with a laugh.

Though Tulane had mostly closed, Sharma was able to move into his third-floor dorm room before leaving the city to return to Houston. Tulane had said the university would reopen as soon as possible, but by last Wednesday Sharma and his family grew skeptical that Tulane would be a viable option for the fall. “We decided to look for some other alternatives,” Sharma said.

He called several schools, including Texas A&M and Rice, before trying private institutions. “Grinnell said … they didn’t have any dorm space. But Jim [Bock, Swarthmore dean of admissions] was really helpful.”

When Bock told Sharma that he would be allowed to pay the Tulane tuition, Sharma was sold. He found out about his acceptance on Saturday and was on a plane to Philadelphia this past Sunday. Sharma now lives in a single on the third floor of ML. “It’s a little small,” he laughed, “but I think everyone’s really friendly, especially in this dorm.”

Sharma remains upbeat, even though his belongings are stuck in Tulane. “My stuff is somewhere floating,” he said, though he hoped that being on the third floor might help. He is enrolled in a variety of classes standard for first years, including Introduction to Economics and Chemistry 10.

“Tulane wasn’t the only affected institution. New Orleans wasn’t the only affected city,” Vice-President Maurice Eldridge ‘61 said. "Right now we’re in contact with two students from Dillard." Final decisions about whether other students will join Swarthmore for the fall will most likely be made by the end of the week, Bock said.

Along with the response from the administration, members of the Swarthmore community have begun to organize larger efforts to aid hurricane victims.

Approximately 60 people, including students, faculty and borough residents went to a meeting at the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility on Tuesday to brainstorm ideas for aiding victims in the New Orleans area. Ideas considered ranged from housing refugees in newly acquired campus housing to organizing a lecture series on the systemic reasons for the size and scope of the disaster. There was particular enthusiasm for fundraising and directly volunteering in afflicted areas.

“This by no means is the end of this process. This is the start. We’ll be coming back again,” Pat James, Associate Director for Student Programs and Training at the Lang Center, said.

“There was a real groundswell all over campus [about this issue.]” James said. “From here it’s turning ourselves into committees and doing the work. There’s a real interest and commitment to do a town-[college] partnership.”

While efforts like the one at Swarthmore get off the ground, residents of the Gulf Coast are trying to determine the extent of damage. Students at Swarthmore and elsewhere have been using the Internet to search for pictures of their neighborhoods and news of their friends who stayed behind.

One Web site, tulanestudentinfo.blogspot.com, had pictures of the area in which Tulane is located. The pictures revealed significant damage that struck close to home for Koerber.

“I used to go to [that diner]. That’s 10 minutes from my house,” Koerber said, pointing to a picture of a restaurant next to a flooded parking lot. A jumbo 20-foot root beer can lay upside down in front of the diner on the submerged pavement, having broken off the roof and fallen to the ground.

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