As the state recovers from the damage caused by Hurricane Gustav, we at The Maroon would like to commend the university for implementing and executing a plan of action to safely and timely evacuate the campus.

We applaud the members of the emergency preparedness team, as they worked diligently to assess the damage done to our campus and re-open it as soon as possible.

Nonetheless, there were a few kinks in the plan of action that still need to be worked out.

Loyola’s online Blackboard site is a great tool to supplement what students learn in the classroom. It has been drilled into our heads through the various syllabuses from our professors that in the case of an interruption during the semester, our classes would continue via Blackboard. During this case, the “interruption” was a category two hurricane.

Because this was a hurricane that interrupted the semester, many students evacuated to places that did not have Internet access. If they were unable to continue classes online, were they forced to miss out on the work and risk failing?

On Wednesday, University President Rev. Kevin Wildes, S.J., announced in a campus-wide e-mail that fall break, scheduled for Oct. 13 and 14, would be cancelled “in light of the events of last week,” i.e. Hurricane Gustav.

He said the days designated for fall break are placed in the academic in case they are needed to make up school days missed. Yet, why was it necessary to cancel fall break if our classes were continued via Blackboard?

As far as the process of evacuating students to a safer location, Loyola did the best they could in light of the circumstances.

The university successfully evacuated 13 residents, mostly international and special needs students, though many students have complained the Baton Rouge high school they were shipped to did not have the best living conditions.

Some students expressed disappointment that they were evacuated to a place that was in the path of the storm. A storm can turn any direction, at any given time, and in Loyola’s defense, there was no way of knowing the hurricane damage Baton Rouge received would directly affect the students.

In a campus-wide e-mail sent out by Wildes Monday, he expressed gratitude to almost every campus employee and the students for their hard work and cooperation during the evacuation process.

But Wildes failed to thank the Residential Life student employees for accompanying those students who had no other way of leaving the city.

Granted, this was the first time the university put its re-vamped emergency preparedness plan into action since Hurricane Katrina, and it was a far better a cry than the way the university handled this type of emergency three years ago.