KRT CampusFour days after Hurricane Katrina devastated student move-in at Tulane, Loyola and other universities along the Gulf Coast, students have been frantically searching for colleges that will temporarily enroll them until their campuses are deemed safe for return.
“We have had so many calls today that it overloaded our phone bank, we’ve had more than 150 inquiries over the past three days,” said Robert Wiltenburg, the dean of University College.
Most students applying to the University will be placed in the Visiting Students Program and remain at University College for either a semester or a year. “Frequently [the program] will be for someone who is a St. Louis native who had been going somewhere else but has pressing family reasons to be back in St. Louis,” Wiltenburg said.
The program, which usually accepts 10-15 students a semester, will try to accommodate as many students affected by the hurricane as possible. “We don’t know yet exactly what [the final acceptance numbers] will turn to because we’re still in the process of meeting with the students and their parents and evaluating their situations,” Wiltenburg said. Approximately 12 students have been accepted into the program as of yesterday.
Almost all of the students applying for the University College Visiting Students Program are undergraduates. “The graduate students are in a different situation, if they’re writing a dissertation, they might need [specific] library faculties,” Wiltenburg said, adding that an equal number of freshmen and upperclassmen students have been requesting admittance information.
In an e-mail to the University community, Chancellor Mark Wrighton announced that “Washington University will be accepting some of these students on a visiting, non-degree-seeking basis and also will be offering library privileges and work space to graduate students and scholars.” He noted that the University has “already heard from some of these students, including many from the greater St. Louis region.”
One of those is the son of Steve Fazzari, the chairman of the economics department. Fazzari, whose son Anthony was about to complete his senior year at Tulane University, said he’s had some communication with the admissions office here about his son enrolling in the school for semester.
“They’re very helpful. They’re very accommodating. They’re doing everything they can,” he says.
But Fazzari and his son won’t make a decision about plans for the upcoming semester until Anthony returns home tomorrow from Dallas, where he went to ride out the hurricane.
In the meantime, Tulane administrators are gathering in Houston to form a game plan for the next few months.
“Obviously, he would prefer to go to his own school. He’s a senior, he’s pretty far along with the credits he needs to take.” Fazzari said. “So we’re waiting for Tulane. They haven’t communicated with anybody. Nobody thinks they can mount a semester at Tulane.”
When he returns to New Orleans, Anthony will come back to an apartment – the condition of which is unknown – in which he left almost all of his belongings.
“He left Saturday night, took his laptop, a few days clothes, threw them in the back of the car and went off,” Fazzari said. “All the other stuff is sitting in a second floor apartment.”
University representatives will also discuss the possibilities of a University-wide response to Hurricane Katrina in a meeting this afternoon. Student groups are invited to send representatives to the meeting, which will take place from 1-3 p.m. in McMillan Caf‚.