CONCORD, N.H. — A New Hampshire university is offering a free semester to college students displaced by Hurricane Harvey, 12 years after it helped a similar group after Hurricane Katrina.
Franklin Pierce University will provide free tuition, room and board to up to 20 students for the fall semester. The university made a similar offer in 2005 and ended up enrolling 14 students from Louisiana, including Jessica Orgeron, who said Thursday she was close to tears remembering the warm welcome she received.
“A group of women made me a quilt, they made quilts for all the students who came, and I still have that,” she said. “I can’t say enough good things about my experience at Franklin Pierce.”
University President Kim Mooney said she wants to provide a temporary home and safe environment for students who might otherwise struggle to keep their education on track after such a devastating storm. Mooney, who has reached out to her counterparts at several Texas colleges and universities, said the offer is in keeping with the school’s vision statement, which calls on students to be “catalysts for positive change within and beyond their communities.”
“We prepare leaders of conscience at Franklin Pierce, and right now as we witness the devastation in Texas and launch our 2017-2018 academic year, we feel very strongly that this is the right thing to do,” she said.
Orgeron, 33, was a 21-year-old senior at Loyola University in New Orleans when Katrina struck. Though her parents’ home in a New Orleans suburb survived, her grandparents and many friends lost their homes. She searched online for “Katrina scholarships” and found Franklin Pierce.
Less than two weeks after the storm, she arrived in New Hampshire. Though she had never been to New England, she said the people she met were not as different as she expected, and she considers her time in New Hampshire an important period in her life.
