CHRIS SEGAL
News Editor
Eight months ago, Pepperdine accepted 12 college students affected by Katrina to attend classes and continue their education. As the months passed, the students didn’t just attend classes, they became a part of the Pepperdine community.
“I think Pepperdine tried to be very generous,” Dean of Admission Paul Long said. “We were overfull in the fall, and we tried to shoe horn them in. We would like to have taken more.”
Nine students came from Tulane, two from Loyola and one from Xavier. The students attended the university as visiting or non-degree students.
Eleven of the students have returned to their own colleges leaving one former Tulane student as a permanent member of the Pepperdine community.
“The reason I choose to stay at Pepperdine is that I have nothing to go back for,” said San Diego-native junior Christina Geraci. “My roommate is staying at UT-Austin, and I could stay at Pepperdine where I have established myself for a semester.”
Geraci, a Spanish major, evacuated from her newly-rented apartment on State Street in New Orleans with enough clothes to last for six or seven days and made a 14-hour drive to Houston.
There were hundreds of students trying to get into universities around the country so that they didn’t miss a semester worth of classes. Geraci and Nicole Hutchinson, a junior from Tulane, had trouble finding space at California schools.
Hutchinson is from Calabasas and she wanted to transfer somewhere close to home. She applied to Cal Lutheran, which didn’t respond to her request until after she was already attending classes at Pepperdine, and she found that both Claremont-McKenna and Northridge could not accommodate her.
Geraci and started applying to schools near her parents’ home in San Diego before Tulane cancelled classes. She applied to University of California-San Diego, the University of San Diego and San Diego State University, but was denied because all three were full.
Hutchinson contemplated staying at Pepperdine after her semester living at home and attending classes but decided to return to New Orleans.
“I considered staying at Pepperdine because I liked the people and the teachers, but I really would have missed not going back to Tulane,” Hutchinson said.
Geraci is giving back to the Pepperdine community next year by being an RA.
“With my life experiences — being at the military institute and by being a Katrina refugee — I have so much real life knowledge in conflict resolution that I can bring to my residents as an RA,” Geraci said.
Hutchinson is giving back to New Orleans by working with Habitat for Humanity to rebuild homes and doing service projects on the weekends with her Tulane peers.
Mardi Gras was smaller this year but the spirit of the culture doesn’t seem to be gone, Hutchinson said.
The transfer students had the opportunity to explore a new campus while Pepperdine students can learn a lesson on how to deal with tragedy.
The lesson from Katrina was that even when things are going well to be prepared for life’s disappointments and to face problems with the same resilience as the New Orleans students, Long said.
03-23-2006