(U-WIRE) WASHINGTON — For New Orleans-area college students, New Year’s Eve marked just the first in a series of new beginnings.Just days after the start of 2006, thousands of students at colleges across the Gulf Coast returned to begin their first post-Katrina semester in an academic community that has changed greatly from the one they left nearly five months ago.
While no colleges in the area have had to close their doors, none managed to escape Katrina’s impact. Tulane University’s uptown and downtown campuses suffered roughly $200 million in damages, forcing the school to lay off more than 200 professors and scale back some academic programs.The reopening of Tulane alone – which boasts more students than any other area college – is expected to expand the local population by 20 percent. Scott Cowen, president, said in a statement that he hoped the beginning of the new semester could help restore optimism to the storm-ravaged city.However, while several New Orleans-area school officials have expressed delight at the numbers of returning students, many schools – particularly the smaller colleges – are still struggling to recover. Dillard University and Xavier University of Louisiana were both forced to cut almost a third of their staff.
Other schools are worried that the revenue from returning students will not compensate for the damages. Despite the return of 90 percent of the school’s undergraduates, the president of Loyola University New Orleans, the Rev. Kevin Wildes, S.J., recently told faculty and staff that tuition dollars alone may not be enough to bring the school back to its former condition.
At convocation on Jan. 9, Wildes expressed “deep concern” about Loyola’s dependency on tuition, which he said is responsible for 72 percent of net revenue. He estimated the university’s current losses for the year are at $20 million and urged older faculty members to consider retirement as a cost-saving measure.
While the students themselves may not feel the brunt of Katrina’s financial woes, many are finding it challenging to readjust to a city that has changed so dramatically.
“It’s so peculiar to go around and not see the life that used to be in the city,” said Ashley Genz-Foster, a junior at Loyola. “There’s nobody playing the trumpet downtown anymore. It’s like the breath has been taken out of the city and we’re all just trying to get by and breathe on our own.”
