Brian Junod, music business junior, learned in late September that St. Louis University intended to charge him full tuition. For Junod and many of the other 126 students that attended SLU for their displaced semester, this was a frustrating discovery.

After Katrina, Junod entered St. Louis University assuming that, like the other Jesuit colleges across the country, SLU would take him in for the semester without charging more than Loyola New Orleans would have.

“They say they made it [their intention to charge full SLU tuition] clear at the beginning,” said Junod, “but it wasn’t clear to me, and I know I’m not alone.”

A.J. Sepulveda, a psychology sophomore who attended SLU did not find out about the financial expectations until even later, nearly halfway through the semester. She said SLU told students as they enrolled that all financial decisions were pending, and the university didn’t announce its decision until it was too late to change.

All Jesuit institutions except SLU that took in displaced students from Loyola accepted the students with the understanding that they would pay exactly what they would have at Loyola.

According to John Cornwell, Loyola University’s assistant provost, Loyola University found out about SLU’s decision to charge students around the same time Junod did, in late September.

“The worst thing was it was well after we had started getting the word out saying that all the Jesuit schools had the same policy, and then we found out that they didn’t all have the same policy. We were doing that upon information that we were fed. A lot of it was just the confusion of not having good communications. “

Because it took weeks to set up a new university headquarters, it wasn’t until October that Loyola began contacting all the colleges and universities that had taken in Loyola students.

University President the Rev. Kevin Wildes, S.J., said that because there were so many different schools that took in displaced students – more than 400 schools at the most recent count – it was impossible for there to be uniformity in how the various schools charged.

“The structure that I thought was in place was that students would go, and that if there were issues with finances, we would deal with them institution to institution,” Wildes said. “I only found out later when I actually visited St. Louis that individual students were being charged.”

Wildes said that while this situation was unfortunate, no student would pay twice for the Fall 2005 semester. Any tuition already paid to Loyola for the Fall 2005 term by students who went to SLU would be either refunded or rolled over to pay for the Spring 2006 semester.

Much of his work in the spring will be sorting out the paperwork from all the different colleges, Wildes said.

Despite the situation with St. Louis University, Cornwell said that, on a whole, the way that other colleges worked with Loyola in the aftermath of Katrina was an excellent example of teamwork under crisis.

“I’m very proud of what we’ve been able to do, and what the others across the country, whether Jesuit or not have been able to do,” said Cornwell. “To me that’s a very positive story in a world with so much despair.”

Kevin Corcoran can be reached at [email protected].