When New Orleans residents got the order to evacuate the city
days before Hurricane Katrina made landfall in late August, Robert
Stein wasn’t too worried.
The six-year New Orleans resident and Tulane University Law
School student loaded his two dogs and one cat into his sport
utility vehicle and drove with his girlfriend to Memphis. There
they visited Graceland and expected to wait out the storm.
“I had been familiar with evacuations,” Stein said.
But over the next few days, he and his girlfriend began to realize
that “this was not an average hurricane.”
Now, more than a month later, Stein still has not returned to
his New Orleans apartment and has yet to personally witness the
extent of the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina ““ one of the
costliest natural disasters in U.S. history.
As Tulane and the city of New Orleans begin a difficult
rebuilding process, Stein has temporarily enrolled in the UCLA
School of Law in an effort to maintain some semblance of a normal
education.
And he’s not alone.
UCLA is one of a number of universities that has enrolled
students displaced by the hurricane. The majority of the 84
students who were offered accommodation by UCLA come from Tulane,
Xavier University and the University of New Orleans.
Most of the students also expect to return to their schools
after fall quarter ends, but both students and administrative
officials remain uncertain about a timeline for the rebuilding
process and a return to New Orleans.
Annette Evans and Kristen Okpara had already moved in to their
dorms on the Xavier campus and the school year was only days old
when they were told to evacuate.
The two, both from the Los Angeles area, met last year as
freshmen and each made the decision to relocate to UCLA because it
was near home and classes had not yet begun. But neither came
straight to UCLA.
Okpara drove with friends to Texas and Evans went to Lafayette,
La., “thinking that it was just a weekend thing.”
As that “weekend thing” stretches into weeks and
months, many of these displaced students may soon have to face some
difficult questions.
Jorja Leap, a professor of social welfare, said many of these
students may suffer from what she called the “sleeper
effect,” in which people who have suffered a loss
“adjust in the short term, but in the long term their loss
can come back to hit them.” As the time to return to their
schools approaches, many students may face questions of whether
they want to return, where they belong and what the future
holds.
To help combat this, Leap said, the UCLA community needs to
listen to the students rather than tell them how to cope with the
situation.
“I think we have to give them their own time to adjust. We
need to ask these students what they need and not tell them,”
she said.
Evans, Okpara and Stein all hail from Southern California
originally, but the students who chose to enroll at UCLA come from
all over the country, said Julie Jaskol, a spokeswoman for UCLA
Extension, which has been responsible for enrolling the
hurricane-affected students.
Though Stein said he was grateful that he had family in the
area, this has nonetheless been a very difficult and costly
experience. “I’ve been basically supporting myself with
my credit card and borrowing from my family,” he said.
“It’s been very frustrating.”
“I don’t have a place to live anymore in New
Orleans. I heard that my apartment structure has, quote unquote,
wall-to-wall maggots,” Stein said. “It’s
basically a cabin without water or power.”
Evans said she lived on the fourth floor of her dorm building,
but she doesn’t know if her belongings will be there when she
returns or if they made it through the hurricane undamaged.
“All my stuff is there ““ all my clothing, all my
shoes,” she said. “All my stuff is basically
gone.”
Okpara said she left most of her belongings in her dorm room and
was told to assume it was all lost to either hurricane or flood
damage, or to looting.
But even in the face of this historic disaster, many of the
students remain positive about their stay in Westwood.
“It’s been an incredibly pleasant experience,”
Stein said. “People have been making us feel like we are just
regular students.”
Leap said one of the most positive social aspects in
Katrina’s wake has been the efforts to accommodate the
affected students.
“I see tremendous efforts in the UCLA community to respond
to the needs of these students,” she said. “I think
it’s a real strength on the UCLA campus that we want to
provide help.”
Among those efforts, the Undergraduate Students Association
Council Student Affairs commission representatives held an
orientation meeting for the students, and members of the council
gave the students $100 gift certificates to help pay for their
books.
President Bush is also expected to sign a U.S. Senate bill
passed last week which would give an additional $36 million to
universities in the Gulf Coast region to help pay for the living
costs of relocated students.
But even with the attempts of UCLA administration, the Westwood
community and the federal government to accommodate the affected
students, the future remains unclear.
A message from Xavier President Norman Francis posted on the
university’s Web site echoed the uncertainty swirling around
the Gulf Coast region in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
He expressed confidence in the rebuilding process but said there
are many difficult issues to be resolved before that can begin.
“There are still many questions that we are unable to
answer at this time, but hope to answer later. … We must be
thankful to God that we are alive to regroup and to continue our
mission,” the message reads.