Scattered Educators, Students Try to Regroup

Marvalene Hughes has tracked down her provost and chaplain, and late yesterday afternoon she located a vice president.

Now the Dillard University president needs to find the rest of her faculty and staff and let students know what's going to happen for the rest of the school year.

She's still not sure what the answer will be.

"My campus is underwater," she said, "about five to eight feet underwater."

From her sister's home in Alabama, Hughes spent yesterday on the phone talking to emergency management officials, insurance agents and administrators scattered across the country -- and watching TV footage of a city submerged.

Tens of thousands of evacuees from New Orleans colleges and universities are scattered across the country, trying to figure out how to salvage a school year that started with disaster. Terry Hartle of the American Council on Education estimated that 75,000 to 100,000 college students in the New Orleans metropolitan area have been displaced by the storm and that more than 30 schools in the region have been affected.

As emergency workers labored, administrators scrambled to find colleagues, establish Web sites and begin figuring out what next. Schools as far north as Massachusetts, including some in the Washington area, began opening their doors to stranded students, offering help ranging from a single course to full academic and residential packages. Relief drives for students were launched across the country.

And federal education officials promised that they would "put away the red tape," including easing timelines for repaying student loans.

Hartle said five public schools in Mississippi have been shut down for lack of power. He also said he had been told that Tulane University was airlifting its president, Scott Cowen, off campus last night and working to establish operations in Houston. Hartle's organization was still trying to reach leaders at most New Orleans campuses.

Nobody had heard late yesterday from the president of Xavier College, Norman Francis, said Michael Lomax, president of the United Negro College Fund. Francis, who has served more than 40 years, longer than any president at any other college in the country, had remained in the city with his family because Xavier "is his life," Lomax said.

Nobody connected to any college or university in New Orleans could say yesterday when schools might reopen.

The Association of American Universities and the American Council on Education are trying to coordinate plans with various campuses. Washington area schools, including George Washington, Catholic and Georgetown universities, were talking about the best ways to help. The University of Virginia announced yesterday evening that it would welcome academically qualified Virginia residents enrolled in New Orleans colleges as visiting students if they contact the school this week.