 Hurricane Katrina forced millions out of New Orleans, including 2,700 college students from the area who decided to make the University their second home and adopt Mike the Tiger as their one-semester mascot.
While at the University, many students helped out evacuees doing one of the only things they could in the months following Katrina – relief work.
Some created new fund-raising initiatives to offer aid.
The student-led fundraiser Clippin’ for Katrina raised almost $3,000 to go toward Habitat for Humanity, a non-profit organization that builds homes for the less fortunate. Participants were asked to donate $20 to receive a haircut and themed T-shirt.
After a semester away from their home universities, a large majority of displaced students returned to the Crescent City.
Almost 90 percent of students at Tulane and Loyola universities did not have a problem returning to their campuses, which both seemed normal in their uptown, hardly storm-ravaged bubble, amid a city strangely filled with destruction.
Mike Strecker, Tulane director of public relations, said in an article published in The Daily Reveille on Feb. 7, 2006, that the campus saw almost no changes.
“If you sat on campus, you just wouldn’t know,” Strecker said. “You wouldn’t know a hurricane came through here.”
But Tulane did face financial cutbacks, and the school was forced to cut four of its six engineering programs so the school could use the funds elsewhere.
Boarded up buildings and an empty Lakefront area greeted 63 percent of University of New Orleans’ students and 90 percent of its faculty.
The desolate campus hosted $103 million of damage.
UNO Chancellor Timothy Ryan said at an April 20 Board of Supervisors meeting the school had no choice but to declare financial exigency, meaning the university would have the chance to throw to the side employee contracts, including tenure.
But those at Dillard University gained a $400 million bill after Katrina, much higher than its $48 million endowment, and lost precious time at their beloved campus.
The university made a memorable move to its one-semester home in the New Orleans’ Hilton Riverside Hotel.
Contact Marissa DeCuir at [email protected]
