Some displaced New Orleans students may not be able to make their own decisions about which school – their original or foster – they will continue to attend after the end of the current semester.
Alex Polizzi, psychology freshman, said she is not going back to Loyola University in the spring. Polizzi never attended a class at Loyola and has already officially withdrawn from the university.
Polizzi said she was only planning to stay at the University for one semester, but has decided to remain because she does not want to go back to New Orleans in its present condition.
But not all schools that took in displaced students are extending the same open-door accessibility in the spring.
Displaced students from New Orleans institutions attending Rice University, Harvard University and the University of California at Berkeley will not have a seat at those schools next semester. But, students who transferred to LSU, University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M and University of Alabama will.
Tony Wallette, assistant director of admissions, said LSU, which enrolled 2,896 displaced students, has received 294 applications from displaced students to transfer in the spring.
Alice Reinarz, interim assistant provost for enrollment at A&M, said his university admitted visiting students for a year, instead of just the fall semester like most universities.
“We did it this way because under conditions of extreme stress, there were people saying they wanted a little stability,” Reinarz said.
Cathy Andreen, director of media relations at the University of Alabama, said his school will accept applications from the 85 displaced students attending the school.
Suzi Deem, with admissions at the University of Texas, said UT is accepting transfer applications from the more than 300 displaced students attending, but the response has been low - fewer than 50 applications.
Robert Mitchell, director of communications for the faculty of arts and sciences at Harvard, said the university only accepted visiting students for one semester because the university policy in place before the hurricane outlined that visiting students cannot return the next semester.
Mitchell said any student attending Harvard as a visiting student may apply for admission for fall 2006.
Likewise, Esther Gulli, vice chancellor for student affairs executive administrative officers at Berkeley, said visiting students may not remain at Berkeley for the spring 2006 semester. Berkeley admitted 77 students from the New Orleans area, 61 of those being from Tulane.
Gulli said the students are not required to return to the New Orleans schools and some students are sitting out a year or attending a community college.
Ann Wright, vice president for enrollment at Rice, said the 106 displaced students from Tulane were admitted as emergency visiting students. Wright said visiting students may apply for fall 2006 after attending a semester at another school.
Wright said Rice will accept students who were not admitted as visiting students, and that Rice has received one application from a student to transfer in the spring from New Orleans, that was not a visiting student.
Troave Profice, broadcast journalism senior, is going back to Loyola in January. She said while she has made friends at LSU and enjoyed her semester here, she is going back to graduate in May.
“I have invested too much time and money into Loyola,” Profice said. “I think things will get back to normal. Things will be different but the same.”
Megan Aucoin, graphic design freshman, said she is going back to Loyola because she misses the uptown atmosphere and the small campus.
“At first I hated LSU,” Aucoin said. “If I had to come back I would be more than happy to come back, but I don’t want to.”