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Jackson State Plans Sept. 12 Reopening

Photo credit: Kendrick Marshall Damage on the Jackson State University campus included the Woodard science and engineering building.

By Kendrick Marshall
Black College Wire

With power outages affecting all campus buildings, Jackson State University was still recovering from the effects of Hurricane Katrina and planned to reopen Sept. 12.

University President Ronald Mason Jr. shut down the school while sheltering hundreds of refugees from harder-hit flood areas to the south. It was announced on Labor Day that the university would postpone the resumption of classes, originally scheduled for Sept. 6, until Sept. 12. But all faculty and staff should report to work on the original date.

Many students and displaced people remained on campus.

"This is very frustrating," said junior Daniel Conalez, who was one of a handful of Jackson State students temporarily making a home in the library, one of the few buildings with generator power. Conalez said the students were not provided mats to sleep on, and had to make beds out of the many desks that were in one of the rooms.

As Katrina passed through central Mississippi, the high winds caused slight tree damage and resulted in broken glass on campus, which was to be cleaned up by the time classes resumed, school officials said. More enduring will be the effect of the power outages.

"We had to throw all of our food out of the dorms, and only eat what was in the dining hall," Conalez said. He said students were able to hook up a PlayStation 2 electronic game system to a television to pass the time.

"There was no power in the buildings and there was some broken glass on some floors, so we had to make the decision to move the students,� said Marcus Chaney Jr., director of business and community services. University officials made the decision to move male students to the campus library and female students to the student union. Chaney expected the students to move back into the dorms when the power was restored.

According to Jackson State officials, only 10 to 15 evacuees from Tulane University were left on campus as of Aug. 31, four days after more than 500 arrived by bus to seek shelter as flood waters threatened their New Orleans campus. The remaining evacuees were expected to leave Jackson Sept. 1 and board flights for their hometown destinations.

For them, the names Ivan, Betsy and now Katrina have become all too familiar.

In the dark hallway of Jackson State�s Lee E. Williams Athletic and Assembly Center, where evacuees from Tulane were housed, conversations continued about the devastation still unfolding a few hundred miles away.

"It seemed like I was watching a movie," said Claude Owens, an adviser to student organizations at Tulane, who made the 186-mile journey to Jackson State. An unidentified off-duty Tulane police officer, who made the same trip, chimed in, "Yeah, but this movie does not last two hours; this movie will play out for the rest of our lives."

Katrina, a Category 5 storm, leveled several small cities and towns along the Gulf Coast and lower regions of Alabama and Mississippi. In Katrina�s wake came a storm surge. Levees broke, sending more water flooding into New Orleans and other areas below sea level. Floods ravaged hundreds of miles of shoreline. As a result of the damage caused by the deadliest tropical storm in U.S. history, New Orleans has been declared uninhabitable, with more than 80 percent of the city under water. The death toll has not yet been determined.

"My mom and grandmother lived through Betsy, and that was the hurricane of her generation. This hurricane is of our generation," Owens said.

This is the second consecutive year that Jackson State University has taken in evacuees from Tulane. Last year, 150 students and staff members made the journey to Mississippi�s capital from New Orleans and waited out the effects of Hurricane Ivan at Jackson State for three days.

The agreement to house students and staff from Tulane in case of a hurricane or other natural disaster was made initially in 2000. At that time, Tulane�s William Schroeder, director of insurance and risk management, outlined in a letter to Jackson State�s Larry Belton, then acting vice provost for student life, how the university could be used as a temporary shelter.

"The university and Tulane have shared an emergency evacuation site plan initiated over three years ago for just such an eventuality as this," said Belton, now communications director. It began when Hurricane Isidore threatened to hit the Louisiana area in 2002, and at that time would have caused mass evacuations throughout the state. �Jackson State and the university community have long shared in this spirit of caring and giving," Belton said.

"We knew right away when we first got word that this hurricane was serious," said Dave Haden, Tulane�s director of residential education and community standards.

With eyes beginning to well, Haden said the university was informed to leave the city immediately on Saturday, Aug. 27, even though classes had not yet begun.

"It was the first day freshman were reporting to school and we had to tell them to pack up all of their things and leave for home because this serious hurricane was coming," he said.

Haden, who was making his second evacuation trip to Jackson State in as many years, said the host school treated every member of Tulane with respect and helped their guests with anything they needed. The university gave them access to all its buildings. At a campus shelter, bottled water, board games and nonperishable food were made available. The Tulane party had full access to the campus dining hall for breakfast, lunch and dinner and access to free telephone services in the Assembly Center.

"Jackson State bent over backwards to help us out with anything we needed even though the bad weather was here as well," Haden said.

They had hoped to stay only a few days, but with the tragic turn of events in New Orleans, where water levels continued to rise days after the hurricane, many took the option of going to Dallas or Atlanta, and flying on to their homes.

Even though state officials have said that no one will be able to inhabit New Orleans for months, many of those who fled are ready to move on with their lives.

"I�m eager to see the damage," Owens said. �Maybe it�s like a cleansing. Maybe we can start over and have a better city."

Waiting out the conclusion of Hurricane Katrina at Jackson State was Kyla Leon, a native of Knoxville, Tenn., and a Tulane student who previously attended Xavier University. She said she was shocked by the devastation in New Orleans.

"I know it will take time to rebuild the city,� Leon said, �but I learned never take things for granted and I think a lot of other people here did the same thing."

Kendrick Marshall is a student at Jackson State University and editor-in-chief of the Blue and White Flash.

Posted Sept. 4, 2005