This article was originally published on Sept. 6, 2005. Read the rest of the Reveille’s Remembering Katrina special here.
Editor’s note: the final number of enrolled displaced students came out to 2,896.
Some students from New Orleans universities may have lost nearly everything, but the one thing they were not ready to surrender to Hurricane Katrina is their education.
“Right now, I just want to focus on my studies,” said Deshaun Price, an electrical engineering sophomore from the University of New Orleans. Price’s family evacuated its Gentilly home and is currently seeking refuge in White Castle, La., 30 minutes outside Baton Rouge.
“It’s hard to think about everything that’s gone, but I’m going to try real hard and stay [at LSU] as long as it takes UNO to get back up running again,” he said.
As the Baton Rouge population surged with evacuees from the storm’s destruction, LSU experienced a part of that growth.
As classes re-open today, returning University students will live, eat, work and attend classes with more than 1,700 displaced students from New Orleans colleges who enrolled at LSU on fee waivers and tuition deferments, University officials said.
“I could not be more proud of how LSU has made accommodations for our displaced and distressed students from around the state particularly our sister institutions,” said LSU Systems President William Jenkins, while dropping by Saturday to observe the special enrollment process at Pleasant Hall.
As of Saturday, University Registrar Robert Doolos said that the number of students would likely increase and that the majority would be upperclassmen. The process for undergraduates is expected to continue until the end of the week, with enrollment set to begin today for displaced graduate students.
“The Office of Academic Affairs has worked really closely with deans and department chairs increasing classes and creating new sections for students to register,” Doolos said.
Officials asked students to present any kind of identification that would prove they were students of any of the affected New Orleans institutions in order to register and keep prior classifications.
Doolos said evacuees will be classified as visiting students, which will allow them to earn LSU credit while maintaining their matriculating status at a New Orleans university.
Faculty within each department will determine which courses they should take for this semester based on assessment conversations with the students, he said.
Some freshman students are being allowed to enroll as LSU students, Doolos said, because they were admitted to LSU earlier but chose to attend a university in New Orleans this semester.
Doolos said they have opened existing course sections that had the room capacity to hold more students and new sections have been added.
Some New Orleans universities have only cancelled classes for this semester, but Doolos said he was not sure whether the University could sustain the increased population throughout the rest of the academic year.
For now, officials said they’re focusing on this semester alone and ensuring that the displaced students are not left behind in the long run.
“They will have earned LSU credit, which is legitimate college credit,” Doolos said. “But I cannot speak to these colleges if they will work with these students when they transfer their credits back.”
And while Price will have his Pell grants, subsidized and unsubsidized loans transferred so that he can finance this semester at the University, Brandi Tregre said she wasn’t quite sure where the money was going to come from.
Tregre has only one semester left to complete her masters’ degree in a dual program at Xavier and Tulane universities, both private institution that offered her private funding.
“It’s difficult, but I know that God is not going to give me more than I can handle,” said Tregre, a biomedical engineering graduate student.
University Bursar Larry Butcher said that working out the financial details for students holding scholarships from private colleges was a complicated issue. The Office of Bursar Operations will defer payments, he said, and is focusing on getting the students registered and adjusted first.
“We’re going to work with each university’s system and make sure every person is taken care of,” Butcher said. “Its going to have to be a case by case thing.”
Tregre said she has received so much support from groups like Delta Sigma Theta’s Iota Theta chapter and the LSU National Society of Black Engineers and will be able to stay with relatives in Baton Rouge.
Other students, like Price, will have to rely on newly opened campus housing in the Pentagon, according to Erica Price, with the Office of Residential Life.
“So far we’ve been able to house all the students who have applied for housing,” Erica Price said. “We were able to house all our LSU students, so the spaces that were left, we offered to New Orleans students, and then we opened two additional buildings – LeJeune Hall and Beauregard Hall.”
Brandi Tregre’s father, Byron Tregre, said while he has an entire displaced family to take care of and Brandi’s unexpected change in education plans to finance, he couldn’t be more pleased that the University is doing all it can to help its neighbors.
“I can’t say it enough,” he said. “We really appreciate that LSU is opening their arms to accept students from the devastated area.”
