Cleaning up, starting over at Tulane
Overall, the speech was pretty reassuring. It gave me confidence that Tulane was going in the right direction, and he provided some justification for the cut programs and sports teams. Some students are angry at Cowen for the decisions he has made, but I actually trust his judgment for whatever reason. Maybe I just like his speeches. But either way, I think he is going to keep the school on track, and long term everything will work out. He threw out a bunch of numbers regarding the school in his speech, but one really struck me as important: 19 percent. That is the increase in applications for admission this year from last year. I guess some people still want to come here.
Freshman day
Thursday was an important day for the university. We got our freshmen back.
The betting is that they will stay longer than four hours this time; I feel like they didn't quite get the full Tulane experience last semester. But I got to spend another day dragging boxes and bags up stairs and down halls so the freshmen could focus on checking in and figuring out where to hide their Foreman grills and whiskey bottles so the RA's won't be able to find them. I heard some more numbers today—92 and 85 percent. These numbers are return rates. 92 percent overall, 85 percent for freshmen. This is good. That means that not too many people got scared away and that the majority of freshmen came back even though they had not seen what it was like here before or after the storm. Well, at least they are back; it would be quite strange for years to come if there was most of a class missing between full years of students.
Anyway, I have gotten to talk to a lot of freshmen, and all the ones I talked to seemed thrilled to be down here. I was a little surprised how negatively most of them reacted to the schools they spent the last semester at. I know for most of the upperclassmen, it was a strange situation just showing up and not knowing many people, but I thought the freshmen would basically be normal freshmen at their fall schools.
I guess they did get there a little late, though, and didn't have normal freshman housing. Either way, they seem excited to be back; that is what matters now.
Post Katrina, orientation includes much more parent involvement. The school wants to reassure parents that they are sending children to a safe place and show that they are ready to reopen the school. Most parents seem confident about the progress. They are having some trouble figuring out where they need to go to get all their kids' ID cards and packages and such like that, but that happens whether the services are in their normal buildings or not.
It seems like the major issues have been overcome. The freshmen have come back, they want to be back, and their parents are going to let them stay back. Now we just need to hope that they were all able to find their way back to the dorms after their first night of Tulane parties.
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