As relief efforts along the Gulf Coast continued and the scope of the destruction wreaked by Hurricane Katrina became clearer this week, members of the Georgetown community were busy opening their hearts, wallets and classrooms to aid the victims of the massive storm.
Students, faculty and administrators have coordinated and implemented one of the most far-reaching relief efforts in university history in response to the hurricane, which hit Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama early last week. The university plans to accept almost 100 students displaced from Loyola University in New Orleans and Tulane University, both of which have said they will not hold fall classes due to the storm’s effects.
Almost 90 students from the two schools have already enrolled at Georgetown, administrators said. The university announced last week that the main campus would accept students from Loyola who live in the D.C. area, and the Law Center is accepting students from Loyola and Tulane.
The main campus has already enrolled 54 students as part of its emergency cross-registration program, university spokeswoman Julie Bataille said. The Law Center has enrolled 29 students, and the edical School is seeking approval from the American Association of edical Colleges to admit 13 students to its clinical studies programs.
Meanwhile, large numbers of students, faculty and on-campus groups formed a coalition, dubbed the GU Hurricane Emergency Relief Effort (GUHERE), an umbrella organization intended to coordinate fundraising and other events on campus to aid victims of the hurricane.
The group, formed last weekend, will oversee a host of events in coming days, including a diaper drive on Saturday, a volunteer information session on Monday, and a benefit concert tomorrow night from 7 to 9 p.m. in Gaston Hall.
In a campus-wide broadcast e-mail Tuesday, University President John J. DeGioia praised the Georgetown community’s response to the hurricane.
“I am deeply grateful to everyone in our community who is providing leadership and care on these important matters,” DeGioia said. “In such difficult times, we are thankful for the solidarity of the Georgetown community and its commitment to assisting neighbors in need.”
Bataille said that all main campus students enrolled through the emergency program are Loyola students from the D.C. area who will commute to class. Most of the students have not been provided university housing, but there are “special circumstances” for a few of the visiting students, she said.
Nurses at the Medical Center are also providing kits of personal items and toiletries to veterans from New Orleans who were recently moved to the Washington, D.C., Armed Forces Retirement Home.
Bataille said that, for the moment, students from Loyola and Tulane universities are only scheduled to take classes at Georgetown for the fall semester.
“We are waiting for schools in the New Orleans area to address their needs in the spring semester,” she said.
Bataille said that although almost all of the members of Georgetown students’ immediate families have been confirmed safe in recent days, “there are serious concerns about some property damage.” The university is still waiting to hear from over 1,000 alumni in the affected region, she said.
Rory Coakley and Jason Boice, both freshmen from Loyola University attending Georgetown this fall, praised the manageability of Georgetown’s online application process for the emergency program.
“You submitted a form and [administrators] called you within 24 hours,” Boice said. “They called me three hours after I registered.”
“It was easy with the online thing. They were really nice,” Coakley said.
Class options were limited for some students visiting from Loyola, however. Boice said that the classes he is taking at Georgetown are “completely different” from what he was planning to take at Loyola.
“I was taking a lot of music-based classes,” he said. “Now I’m wherever was available. A lot of classes were filled up.”
Both Boice and Coakley make the half-hour commute to Georgetown from their homes for class.
Other universities in the D.C. area have also decided to accept students displaced by Hurricane Katrina. George Washington University spokesman Matt Nehmer said that GWU currently has 30 displaced students enrolled in classes, mostly from Tulane University, though he expects that that number will soon rise to 40 or 50. GWU’s law school enrolled 12 students.
American University is currently accommodating 61 undergraduates from affected areas and expects to enroll up to 20 students in its law school, American spokeswoman Maralee Csellar said.
Student Response
As students from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast arrive on the Hilltop, students at Georgetown are already helping to provide relief to their home states.
Amanda Gant (SFS ’07) helped to organize the GUHERE-sponsored concert, which will feature the Hoya Saxaphones, GU Step Team, the Phantoms, Superfood and GU Harmony. All the money generated from ticket sales and donations will go to the Red Cross.
“We wanted to have something that would be nice on a Saturday night, a good thing to pull people together and raise money,” Gant said. “It’s a donation, so [people are] free to donate more, but we’re suggesting $5.”
Gant said she hopes the concert will raise close to $5,000.
GUHERE is also working with student groups to coordinate a book drive for children affected by the hurricane and hopes to send volunteers to work at the Red Cross’ D.C. Armory. The group is discussing possible service trips to affected areas during the upcoming winter and spring breaks, GUHERE coordinator Nathan Fabian (SFS ’08) said.
Fabian and Stephanie Hill (COL ’06), another group coordinator, held a meeting on Wednesday to introduce leaders of student groups on campus to the new coalition.
“We are not here to run the events,” Fabian said. “We’re here to collect all the events that . clubs put on, to make sure that [they are] publicized, to make sure that there are enough volunteers for the events.”
Hill said that GUHERE will remain on campus as long as victims of the hurricane are in need.
“We’re going to keep this process up and running as long as people need our help,” she said.
All donations GUHERE receives today will be matched two-to-one by the Nestle Corporation, Hill said. The money GUHERE and its affiliate student groups raise is currently being donated to the Red Cross and Catholic Charities.
Hanlon DeVerges (SFS ’06), president of Georgetown’s Southern Society, said that his club has collected over $1,000 in donations at a table in Red Square since last week.
Helping Each Other
Members of the Interfaith Council, a student group created last spring to promote religious understanding, organized a prayer service for victims of Hurricane Katrina Wednesday in coordination with the Office of Campus Ministry.
Students gathered on Copley Lawn at 8:30 p.m. with lit candles to hear prayers of various faiths, including the Muslim call to prayer, a Sikh hymn, a Jewish prayer for healing, and readings from Hindu and Christian holy books.
“We gather in prayer as one community . to offer up prayer in various religious traditions to ask our one creator to bless us and especially for those most affected by the hurricane,” Fr. Tim Godfrey, S.J., director of Campus inistry, said during the service.
Godfrey told those gathered that religious values are a source of hope in painful times.
“We remember not just devastation and death,” he said. “We gather together believing in those wonderful religious virtues that cross all of our traditions: faithfulness, peace, healing, love and compassion, forgiveness, strength, the ability to overcome. . [The] creator empowers us to see beyond the immediate.”
The service also featured a series of prayers led by Interfaith Council members for medical workers in affected regions, those who died in the hurricane, the families that were affected, Georgetown students, and Loyola students at Georgetown. The crowd responded to each prayer with the chorus, “Bring us peace, oh loving God.”
Interfaith Council Co-Chair Hafsa Kanjwal (SFS ’08) said that the service fulfilled a religious need for many who attended.
“At these times you become humbled. You put your trust in God and know that He’ll get you through it,” she said.