NEW ORLEANS – Tucked deep in the bowels of New Orleans’ Hilton Riverside Hotel, Dillard University professor S. Carver Davenport’s piano can be heard playing softly behind a duet of tenors and altos.
It’s Friday at Dillard’s makeshift “Riverside” campus, the college’s home until the administration reopens its Lakefront-area campus in July. Though most students do not have class on Friday, the day still means practice for Davenport and the Dillard University Concert Choir.
Davenport said in his 31 years on staff at Dillard he’s seen a lot; enrollment fluctuates, budgets rise and get cut. He’s had students come and go, new buildings built and old buildings refurbished. And now he’s lost everything – everything except his school and his music.
Dillard University’s small, oak-laden campus arguably suffered the most damage of any New Orleans-area university, accumulating a staggering total bill of $400 million. By contrast, the university’s endowment, the fifth-largest among the nation’s historically black colleges, only stands at $48 million.
Dillard is also the only area university that will not operate on its own campus this semester. While buildings are gutted and grounds repaired, university spokesperson Wendy Waren said the administration plans to have the campus ready for commencement July 1.
Until then, about half of the 2,200 students who attended Dillard before Katrina are calling the 1,600-room Hilton Riverside Hotel their student union, classroom, laboratory, recreational center, practice court and dormitory all in one.
About 750 students and 50 faculty members live in the Hilton Riverside, Waren said.
There are elements of home – from the “Blue Devil Cafe,” the cafeteria named after the school’s mascot, to the relocated Dillard Police Department, which operates at the Hilton. And then there’s the athletes, who wake up at 6 a.m. to run the 27 flights of stairs in the hotel for exercise.
Waren said the administration only expected about 500 students to return, but the Hilton was more than accommodating when 1,100 showed up, allowing the university to sign a contract through June.
Students live on floors four through 12 and take classes in the hotel’s many meeting rooms and exhibition halls.
The spacious, neutral-colored conference room that doubles as Davenport’s choral room and a classroom isn’t the ideal place for choir practice, he said.
“The sound is challenged because of the fixtures,” Davenport said. “There’s no echo back.”
And there is no room in the Hilton Riverside that can compare to his old building, Cook Hall. Opened in 1995, it was the second-newest building on Dillard’s campus. It had quality acoustics and a choral room that Davenport said was beneficial to choir practice.
Beneficial, but not essential.
 
Family Life
There is only one thing essential about the Hilton Riverside to Everett Jones, business management junior and native of New Orleans. And it’s not the luxurious accommodations, the twice-a-week maid service or fresh towels in the mornings – it’s something more.
“It is more of a family,” Jones said.
Hugs, kisses and even tears were there when Dillard reopened Jan. 9.
“It was a relief,” he said. “I was just so happy to see everybody.”
Dillard Student Body President Cortez Watkins said it has been a struggle to regain a “sense of community” in the hotel.
“Dillard is so spacious and green, we enjoy it outside,” he said. “It was so much more to us than a campus, it’s a community.”
Watkins said his administration has planned “lots of parties and cultural events” for students who are restless in the hotel.
Through the consortium set up with Tulane, Loyola and Xavier, Watkins said students can also join student organizations at other schools.
The consortium also allows students at Dillard to take classes at one of the cooperating schools if Dillard does not offer a certain course. Dillard students taking science labs travel to Tulane on Fridays or Saturdays, Waren said, while all art classes are taken at Xavier on Saturdays.
At the Hilton, professors teach back-to-back in an exhibition hall that has been converted into 25 classrooms.
The classrooms are filled with long tables – not desks – and a dry-erase board at the front of the classroom is the only departure from the institutional grays and blues of the cubicle-like walls.
Jimeka Bruno, education senior, said the learning environment “will get better,” and she’s just glad the university is open again.
Her biggest complaint is that there aren’t enough activities to occupy students in off hours.
“There’s no place to hang out, talk loud or play music,” she said. “The Hilton’s still a business, and we have to be respectful.”
Because of a parking shortage, Waren said freshmen and sophomores are not allowed to have cars - confining them to the hotel even more.
Waren said the university bought several buses to transport students to the grocery store and other area universities. She said students have access to the hotel’s health club, and movie nights were set up to occupy free time.
All of Dillard’s athletic competitions were suspended, but the university’s athletes are keeping busy with practice.
Dillard Athletic Director Robin Martin’s entire staff moved on to other jobs post-Katrina, but she said she is proud of the 75 percent of athletes who returned.
Martin said the athletes have grown much closer in spite of the fact the athletic department lost everything from equipment to uniforms in their building, which had 8 feet of water.
Martin said her athletes are a “driving force” for her, and the program will go on.
“We’re athletes,” she said. “That’s what we do.”
Davenport said faith is incredibly important in the lives of all his students – which makes his job easier.
“Most of these kids were brought up in the black Baptist church,” Davenport said. “They have to be challenged to choose selections that are both musical and spiritual.”
Davenport said just being able to work with young people and music again is therapeutic.
 
Giving Back
Public health senior and Miss Dillard University Christy Malbrew said community service, which already was a degree requirement for all Dillard students, is how students are reconnecting to the broken city outside.
Malbrew and SGA Secretary Tanika Cassoen manned a table at lunch Friday signing up students to box food and clothing at a local Baptist church.
“We were already community service oriented. We always helped other cities with projects,” Malbrew said. “But this time we were hit, and people are helping us out.”
Cassoen said the students’ common bond of enduring the effects of Katrina keeps spirits high and people working.
“It affected the school as a whole,” Cassoen said. “When we were spread out across the United States in the fall, it was hard to share that experience.”
Cassoen and Malbrew agreed that the disaster has put service in perspective for Dillard students.
Back in the choir room, Davenport said choosing inspirational music such as Moses Hogan’s “My Soul’s Been Anchored In The Lord” is pointed because his students can relate to suffering now more than ever.
“The selections have the same kind of experience as we have just gone through,” Davenport said.
Davenport said he brings the same type of inspiration to his choice that Hogan, former Dillard music professor who died in 2003, brought to his music.
“There’s no question - music inspires you to go on,” he said.
 
The Future
Malbrew and Watkins said SGA has started work on a book of Dilllard students’ experiences during Hurricane Katrina.
“The student body will never forget this,” Watkins said.
Malbrew said every student will have a page they can use to illustrate their experiences after the storms.
The book, which Malbrew called “Memoirs From Dillard University,” will be placed in the university’s archives and sent to Washington, D.C.
Watkins said that the rebuilt student body exemplifies Dillard’s motto, “Ex Fide Fortis,” Latin for “From faith, courage.”
But Dillard’s future lies with not just black students but other races as well, Watkins said.
“Other races can come here,” Watkins said. “We’re a small institution, but we can have a big impact.”
The clock is ticking until July 1 – the day commencement will again be held to a backdrop of oak and white on Dillard’s campus.
The $400 million price tag Katrina thrust on the university won’t be made up through tuition increases, Waren said, but through insurance money and a fundraising drive, which has already raised more than $14 million.
Administrators and students also seemed confident in recruiting a new class of Dillard graduates.
“We’ve gotten a lot of coverage about our plans,” Waren said. “We’re telling [potential students] that studying in New Orleans right now is a great opportunity.”
Time is also running out for Davenport and his choir practice; soon a biology class will invade his makeshift choral room. But as this particular Friday winds down, Davenport is imploring the altos to sing louder for him.
“It’s such a beautiful line,” he says, singing it back to them.
“Sing holy holy to our Lord.”
Davenport leaves for an exhibition in Norway this week, but he is more preoccupied with coaxing out the sound he wants - the sound he would get back in Cook Hall with his full choir - before they perform at Dillard’s Founder’s Day on Feb. 19.
“Now that’s the sound,” he says, raising his hand with the tune. “That’s the sound we want.”
 
Reporters Marissa DeCuir and Rachel Flarity contributed to this report.
 
Contact Scott L. Sternberg at [email protected]