Not even the LSU System President is exempt from the widespread power outages around town.
In his naturally lit, humid office in the LSU System Office, System President John Lombardi said he wants to try to stay out of everybody’s way during the post-Gustav recovery effort.Lombardi said his job is to mainly support chancellors in each of the system officers and to assist the state and federal governments with whatever they need.”Part of our job is to be useful but stay out of everybody’s way so that people who have real work to do can get it done,” Lombardi said.Although this was not his first hurricane as a university administrator, Lombardi said Gustav was the most damaging he had seen.Lombardi, while president at the University of Florida, saw the damage of Hurricane Andrew in 1992.”It didn’t hit the main campus,” Lombardi said. “It only hit a part of the university that was down at Homestead Air Force Base, and although the devastation was pretty dramatic, it didn’t affect a large number of students.”With many students wondering whether school can actually resume Monday, Lombardi said it all depends on how much power has been restored in Baton Rouge.”It’s hard to tell, but the principle thing we all worry about is whether there’s enough power,” Lombardi said. “If you look at this hurricane, there’s been a lot of property damage, a lot of trees down; but the principle problem that’s resulted from it is there’s no electricity.”He said until everything is reasonably up to speed on power in Baton Rouge, it’s hard to operate the campus at full capacity.University officials are meeting 4 p.m. Thursday to determine whether it is possible to have class next week.”They will work as hard as they can to bring the campus up to at least sufficient power to carry on the main academic functions of a university, and they’re hopeful that can be done in time to start classes on Monday,” Lombardi said. “As suspected it’s not, they’ll make a call sometime on Friday and say, ‘we can’t pull it off,’ but right now it seems like they’re making good progress.”With students missing four days of classes and maybe more this coming week, the question on many minds is if and how will LSU make up lost days.Lombardi said it depends on LSU officials’ and particularly the faculty’s decision on how to make up classes.”I just don’t know what they’re going to do,” Lombardi said.He said he’s amazed with LSU’s, the EOC’s and the volunteers’ response to Hurricane Gustav.”That’s a testimony to the quality of response we’ve seen here everywhere,” Lombardi said.Other System campuses were relatively spared from the devastating effects of Gustav, Lombardi said.”The other campuses had less damage,” Lombardi said. “Their recovery depends on whether their power was removed or was restored.”UNO received very little structural damage, but are depending on power restoration before they can resume classes.LSU-Shreveport had very little damage, and their power has been restored. They have resumed classes Thursday.LSU-Alexandria and LSU-Eunice are expected to resume classes Monday, Lombardi said.
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