ANNA KING
Staff Writer
Few students could begin to fathom the difficulties facing 12 undergraduate students from Tulane, Loyola and Dillard Universities who were forced from the university that they called home.
Through the work of the Admission office and faculty members, these students have already begun their semester here at Pepperdine and are beginning to settle into lives they could never have predicted less than three weeks ago.
“The whole experience has been a big loss. New Orleans is my city, my school, my friends, my home,” said senior Jennifer Shapiro, an evacuee from Tulane University in Louisiana.
Shapiro, an anthropology and Latin American studies major, lived for two years with two of her friends in a house in uptown New Orleans. She was involved in her sorority, Chi Omega, volunteered hours through her sisterhood, belonged to the Pre-Law society and worked 20 hours a week at a local retail store. She had just moved in the evening before and when the request for voluntary evacuation was announced Saturday, Sept. 3. She and her housemates packed their weekend bags and drove to Dallas, Texas, leaving everything behind.
“We thought we’d be partying for a couple of days and be back by Wednesday,” said Shapiro. “Instead we found ourselves glued to the television watching our home being destroyed.”
Originally from Calabasas, Calif., Shapiro was the first person to contact Pepperdine to inquire about a possible place at Pepperdine if Tulane did not re-open. She committed to Pepperdine after Tulane announced later last week on their emergency Web site that they had no plans for the students.
“I called the dean of admission, Paul Long, and told him that I would like to come if his offer still stood,” Shapiro said. “I had gotten the closure I was waiting for.”
Because this is her senior year, Shapiro was lucky enough to be ahead on credits and has already completed all the classes necessary for her major. Instead of worrying about graduating on time, she has signed up for political science, ethnicity, and marketing classes, all areas of interest that she never had the opportunity to pursue. Since she hopes to be able to return to her school for the spring semester, she said she wants to simply focus on academics and hopefully help out locally with the hurricane relief efforts.
Since Shapiro’s house was above sea level, flooding may not have affected the structure too extensively. But without means to enter the city, there is no way to know for sure the full extent of the physical damage, she said.
“I’m just afraid that the tree next to the window in my room has come through the roof,” Shapiro said. “We won’t get back into the house until the city announces it to be sanitary, hopefully before next semester.”
Junior Nicole Hutchinson also found herself leaving the Tulane campus for what she thought was a routine evacuation similar to the ones conducted last year in the wake of hurricane season. She left everything but changes of clothing and drove 60 miles north to Gonzales in Louisiana to stay with her boyfriend’s family.
“During the storm they lost power for three days and experienced a lot of wind,” Hutchinson said. “We were lucky though. The house next door had a tree fall through the roof.”
Nicole had just left her home, also in Calabasas, to move into her dorm room a week and a half before school started as part of her residential adviser duties. After the worst of the storm was over, she drove to Texas to meet her mother and then finished the ride home the next day.
Hutchinson also contacted Pepperdine on her own to ensure she would have a school to attend this term, as well as other schools in the area, including Claremont, Cal Lutheran, and California State University Northridge.
She ultimately chose Pepperdine because she would be able to live at home during her semester away from Tulane, and also because Pepperdine was not asking her to pay tuition. However, the experience of coming home after being hundreds of miles away throughout her entire college career has been a difficult transition, she said.
“Since I’m not used to living at home, it has been a new thing to have my parents constantly asking whether I am doing my homework or not,” Hutchinson said.
While attending Tulane, Hutchinson was active in both the Women’s Group club on campus and the Democratic Club, suiting her collection of majors including political science, history, and women’s studies. While she studied at Tulane she juggled a total of six classes on top of her extracurricular activities.
Hutchinson’s Tulane friends are now scattered across the country, attending universities in Boston, Alabama and Virginia. For the most part, students from Tulane and other affected universities tried to attend schools as close to home as possible.
“One of the hardest parts about leaving Tulane is the fact that all of the relationships and plans that we had made for the year with friends and groups have to be put on hold,” Hutchinson said.
“In the midst of all the turmoil that this disaster has caused, it is nice to provide some help, and a place for them to go to continue on with their academic plans,” Dean of Admission Paul Long said. “I think the Pepperdine community is one of the best places that a visiting student could be in a time like this.”
Both Hutchinson and Shapiro expressed gratitude toward everyone on campus and for the support the university has provided them as they try to get into the routine of life at Pepperdine.
“All of the teachers have helped me with the work I missed and have made sure that I have extra time to finish everything,” Hutchinson said.
“Everyone, from the Faculty to the students, has been nothing but nice and understanding,” Shapiro said.
09-15-2005