Moving Forward
For some faculty displaced by Hurricane Katrina, relocating has been a mixed blessing, but others still long
By Lydia Lum
Two years after Hurricane Katrina, faculty ranks at New Orleans’ historically Black colleges remain noticeably shallower than before the floods.
The languishing numbers mirror a decline in student enrollment. Xavier University of Louisiana’s student head count, for instance, has lingered at about 73 percent of the pre-Katrina enrollment, a spokeswoman says. And a year ago, Dillard University and Southern University at New Orleans saw their student bodies dip to about 56 percent and 60 percent, respectively, of what they were at the beginning of the 2005 fall semester, just before the storm struck.
The devastation forced school officials throughout the area to cancel classes for the entire semester. And, the subsequent financial crisis resulted in mass layoffs, even though some of the furloughed faculty were called back to their jobs when the schools re-opened in the spring.
