Evacuated Tulane students take refuge at Atlanta, Dallas colleges

ATLANTA (AP) – Hundreds of bleary-eyed Tulane University students and staff members were bused to colleges in Atlanta and Dallas Wednesday as they continued their journey from their storm-ravaged campus in New Orleans.

“I’m really tired. Mentally tired,” said Aninda Basu, 30, a Tulane cellular biology instructor, who was holding his 4-month-old daughter while seated on the floor of the Georgia Tech student center.

The evacuation started Saturday, just as many students were arriving at Tulane for the beginning of the school year.

“I’d just gotten there and unpacked everything,” said Daniel Ahn, a 19-year-old freshman from Glenrock, N.J.

But Tulane officials ordered students to evacuate. For those unable to stay with family or friends, the university hired 12 coach buses to take students and staff to Jackson State University in Mississippi.

Close to 700 of Tulane’s nearly 13,000 students chose that option. Many thought the storm would blow over with minimal damage, and they would be back on campus in three or four days.

“Most students didn’t take it very seriously,” said Guergana Gougoumanova, 29, a French literature doctoral student.

But then the magnitude of the storm became clear. Much of New Orleans was flooded. Tulane officials said classes would be postponed until at least late September.

On Monday, Jackson State suffered power outages, darkening the wood-floored gymnasium where the Tulane students were staying. On Tuesday, the gym’s bathrooms went out of service.

Tulane officials then decided to move the students to Atlanta and Dallas, the two of the closest metropolitan areas not hit by the storm. Atlanta’s Georgia Tech and Dallas’s Southern Methodist University agreed to host the students.

Around 275 students headed to Atlanta. About another 140 went to Dallas, including the entire Tulane football team and its coaches and training staff.

The team will share practice facilities with Southern Methodist for the foreseeable future, Tulane associate athletic director John Sudsbury said. The two Conference USA schools play each other Sept. 24. Sunday’s game between Tulane and Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Miss., was rescheduled to the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

Sudsbury wouldn’t guess how long it will be before the team can return to its home facilities.

“We have to wait until the university can assess the situation in New Orleans,” Sudsbury said. “We just don’t know.”

Other Green Wave athletes will be staying at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

In the meantime, Georgia Tech and Southern Methodist were providing rooms, food, telephones, computer access and free airport shuttle services to the Tulane students and staff.

In Dallas, Tulane freshman Katie Trippe of Oceanside, Calif., said Wednesday was the first time many students had been able to read about Katrina’s aftermath.

“We all turned on the TV and clicked on the Internet to see what was going on. We did not know it was that serious,” she said. “I was like ‘Are you kidding me? We where just there a few days ago.'”

Trippe, 18, eventually managed to book a flight home. She didn’t know when she’d be returning to Tulane. “I’ll go home and wait it out,” she said.

By Wednesday, most of the students who could go home decided to do so. “My shuttle leaves in five minutes,” said Jennie Liang, 18, a freshman from Queens, N.Y. who initially turned down her parent’s suggestion to return home with them.

But dozens of international students at Georgia Tech had no family or friends to stay with in the United States. Georgia Tech officials were negotiating with a nearby apartment complex to secure about 40 units for the students, said Rich Steele, director of the university’s student center.

Some students said they’re concerned that the fall semester will be canceled. Tulane spokesman Mike Strecker said no date has been set for the start of classes. “We have to wait until things stabilize. But our goal is to have a semester,” he said.

Meanwhile, other New Orleans colleges were taking their own steps to deal with the storm. For example, about 250 students from New Orleans’ Dillard University were staying in the field house at Centenary College in Shreveport, La., this week.

“What we’re seeing are some colleges and universities that are becoming almost refugee camps,” said Terry Hartle, senior vice president at the American Council on Education.

Hartle said his organization was already receiving reports of students at schools in the path of the hurricane attempting to transfer, concerned their current schools could remain closed for a semester or more.

Hartle said the council was urging the federal government to take steps to make it easier for students to transfer their financial aid to other schools on short notice, a step it has taken after previous disasters, including the Northridge earthquake in California and Hurricane Andrew in Florida.

“Tulane definitely is where I wanted to go and now it’s all up in the air,” Trippe said.