Cleaning up, starting over at Tulane
Richy Leitner was about to begin his second year at Tulane University late last summer when Hurricane Katrina disrupted his life and academics. This week, he's back in New Orleans as the university prepares to reopen its classrooms.
During my orientation training this week, I got a chance to hear Tulane President Scott Cowen speak. He came to address all the orientation coordinators and resident advisers and whoever else may have been in the room. Cowen, who's always charismatic and engaging, was this time naturally speaking about the effects of the hurricane on the university, the city, and all the engineer–offending changes that were made as part of the school's renewal plan.
What really struck me initially about his speech was how much havoc had been wreaked on the university itself. I had seen pictures online of a few windows blown out of freshman dorms, but from most of the reports, I had heard it sounded as if the school had escaped relatively unscathed. Apparently, I heard wrong. In this kind of situation, I guess everything is relative. Sure, the school wasn't torn apart and left for condemnation, but there is a pretty wide gray area in between that and getting away clean. Put two thirds of the campus flooded and strewn with debris of all sorts in that category. The school had to spend $200 million just on physically repairing the campus. Cowen said that, although he would never admit it before, when he first saw what it would take to get the school back into working order, he thought Tulane University would never open again. This was something of a shock to me.
Sure the possibility had surfaced when I talked in the fall with my friends at James Madison University about what I would be doing this semester. But it never really entered my mind that that might actually happen. No friends here had ever really considered that there would simply be no university to return to as we bided our time at our various fall schools. But luckily that was not the case, so we never had to deal with that scenario anyway.
Cowen covered many issues in his speech. There are a lot of things you don't really think about that it takes to get the school back open. Take the lack of schools in the area. How then do you get the faculty and their families to move back? Tulane has to open its own charter school for these kids and other area children. Problem solved, but a new set of expenses and work to do.
After covering a variety of other issues, including those regarding the city and not just the school, Cowen opened the floor for questions. People didn't take it easy on him because he is the school president. The disgruntled engineers were the most aggressive in calling the renewal plan into question, which is completely understandable since their majors are being cut, but if the money numbers that Cowen gave out hold up, it seems hard to argue with the plan on anything other than a personal level. He talked about the safety of the city, saying that despite the abandoned areas it is safer than ever before. Most of the criminal element moved out of the city when the storm hit and has yet to return. He said that environmentally the city was quite safe as well, despite some reports about unsafe water to drink and the like.
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.