Student Life in New Orleans One Year After Katrina

By Brandi Worley, Special to THE BLACK COLLEGIAN with Black College Wire

Images by Gina Batiste

There may not be many stores open, or the laughter of children playing hopscotch in the streets, or a look of freshness in the neighborhoods surrounding the city’s college campuses. Nevertheless, college students returning to New Orleans this fall can see signs of a city trying desperately to rebuild, a year after Hurricane Katrina pounded weak levees and caused major flooding.

The good news is that most necessities of student life can be found, though sometimes not in the immediate areas around the historically black colleges and universities heavily damaged by the floods, and sometimes for a higher price than before the hurricane.

Many students say with optimism that restaurants, gas stations and stores are up and running, and they don’t have a problem finding school supplies and dorm room basics.

It helps to have a car, to get out of the campus neighborhoods to go shopping or see a movie or find a dry cleaner. More difficult, some said, is locating good hair care, especially for some styles such as dreads and braids. It’s also a challenge to get a P.O. box to receive mail and care packages from home. But entertainment is plentiful, students said.

“Up until January, there was a curfew; now you can go, basically everything is open,” said Foluso Shokunbi, 20, a second-year pharmacy student at Xavier University of Louisiana. “They have a lot of entertainment. A lot of clubs are open. The movies are open – all the movie theaters we had before Katrina except for one on the East are open.”

Students may have trouble negotiating traffic in and around the occupied sections of the city and routes to newly crowded areas to which residents fled, some said.

Mathile Coleman, 18, an incoming Dillard University freshman and child psychology major, said she wouldn’t recommend that anyone with an hour break in between classes try to make a short trip off campus. They wouldn’t make it back on time, she warned. Because many New Orleans residents relocated to the West Bank following Katrina, traffic on the Crescent City Connection tollway has increased tremendously.

Though aware of the flood damage that for a year prevented Dillard from moving back to its Gentilly campus, Coleman chose Dillard over Loyola University.

She was impressed that Dillard officials seemed determined to help students overcome the challenges of life in a city recovering from unprecedented disaster.

 “It’s not like you have no resources to help you,” Coleman said. “People are helping you. If you really need it, someone will help you.

“I’m talking to the counselors and they are really working towards getting it better,” she continued. “I want to be that first class back. Loyola sent me everything – roommate info, everything – but I called [Dillard] every single day because this is something that I want to do.”

While campus communities look to reestablish themselves, area merchants that relied on student customers are depending on returning students more than ever as they struggle to rebuild. Many say that the post-Katrina drop in student enrollment is having a devastating effect on their businesses.

For example, Dillard’s enrollment after Katrina has been down by as much as half. Nearby, at the StorAll self-storage company at 4601 Chef Menteur Highway, manager Dan Sharlow said he used to serve 75 to 100 students, mostly from Dillard, before and after school breaks, but now, “I would say the numbers are probably down to 20, 30; I don’t see them all.” Several businesses around the StorAll closed after the floods. Sharlow said his business has begun posting advertising at the area colleges, but, “There isn’t much we can do until the school starts attracting students,” he said.

It’s important to note that for students who are also New Orleans residents, the issue of finding needed supplies and services can be more extreme than for out-of-state students who come to the city just for schooling. They have to cope full time, not just when school is in session, and in many cases, they are still trying to put back together storm-shattered lives.

Gina Batiste, 20, was a junior graphic arts and photography major at Southern University at New Orleans before the storm. Then Katrina dumped 15 feet of water in her family’s house; they fled to Houston.

“When I first got back, that’s what made my motivation to go back to school, because it was hard trying to find places open and get things I need,” she said. “Now, it’s supply and demand, so if you didn’t get it when school first starts, then you have to wait.”

At first, Batiste picked up her studies at ITT Tech University after SUNO was forced to close. However, in time, she had to drop out of school for financial reasons.

Batiste found work as a photographer on the Natchez, a New Orleans steamboat. She plans to save her wages and go back to school in the spring.

“I was like, look, the ball got to start rolling now – it’s one of those ‘now’ situations. If you don’t do it now, it’s going to pass you up,” she said.

To questions about the ease or difficulty of finding services or supplies, she had this reaction: “I feel like that’s materialistic. You can build a house. Yeah, you might have lost memories, but as long as you have your family, that’s all you need.”

Her experience is a reminder that New Orleans is a city of contrasts: It’s hard to believe such a monster storm hit the city where passersby still ask strangers, “How ‘ya doin’ tuday?” with genuine concern and the deepest Southern accent. But then, a casual drive around neighborhoods near the college campuses in late August is telling: The Gentilly neighborhood around Dillard’s campus looks desolate and like a small, underdeveloped country.

Entire houses lie on the garbage curb; small shopping areas are still closed. The Blockbuster and Baskin Robins stores on Gentilly Boulevard are still shuttered. Still, just two blocks down Gentilly Boulevard, where an 18-wheeler truck blocked a lane of the road in front of Dillard’s campus, workers unloaded more than a dozen new refrigerators into apartment buildings.

“I guess if I didn’t have a car it would be a little trying,” because some things in the Gentilly area still are not open, said Michelle Looney, 21, a junior criminal justice major at Dillard and member of the Army National Guard.

“Finding a cleaners is kind of difficult; those that didn’t go underwater went out of business because customers weren’t there,” she said.

Looney irons her own uniform and shirts now, but in the past, she took her clothes to a dry cleaner at Tulane and Broad; flooded out, it is now gone, she said.

Since the storm, Looney hasn’t had a permanent address. While carrying out her duties with Guard, she has been living in and out of hotels, including the Hilton Riverside, where Dillard provided housing and held classes for students from January through the summer.

At the hotel, there were little comforts and amenities that Looney enjoyed.

“The student body got together,” she said. “We had a luau, a step show, jazz night. Food was catered. We had one or two pool parties in the hotel. They tried to make it as comfortable as possible while we were there.”

Because many Post Office branches were damaged, and had not yet reopened, one difficulty the Los Angeles native encountered was renting a post office box. “It’s really hard,” said Looney, who estimated the wait for a box at six months. Whenever there was something really important that she wanted to receive by mail, she had it sent to Los Angeles to her parents’ house, and they then shipped it by an express service to a close friend with an address near her school.

Several students reported that jobs and decent wages have been available in the rebuilding city.

After Katrina, Shokunbi, the Xavier pharmacy student, focused on finding a job while he waited out the months for classes to resume. He found work at Target, at first in Texas, where he had evacuated before the storm, and later, through a transfer with an offer of higher pay, in Louisiana. It made him even more positive about finishing school, he said. “The way I weighed my options out, I made out better here making more money,” he said.

Target was one of several employers offering wages higher than the minimum; even fast-food restaurants were paying workers up to $10 an hour because of the shortage of labor after the city’s evacuation.

“Over 30 percent of our students pre-Katrina worked full time,” said Robert Thomas, enrollment manager at Southern University at New Orleans. “It’s pretty difficult to determine what percent is working now. We encourage students to get work study,” because it employs them in the educational arena and does not compete with classes.

“If they work in this environment, they gain confidence and work close with teachers, and graduate,” he said.

One challenge Shokunbi says he encountered after Katrina: finding a good barber.

“I had twists,” he said. After the storm he had difficulty finding anyone to maintain them, and the prices for hair care spiked. In some shops, the cost of a cut rose $5 or $10. So, “I cut my hair and I just go bald.”

Wayne Hunter, 29, a barber at New Directions Barber Shop on South Carrollton Avenue near Xavier, said prices rose after Katrina because of the need.

“After the storm, we charged $20,” Hunter said while trimming the hair of a Dillard alumnus. “We needed money. No FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency aid]. No unemployment. You had to get it how you live,” he said.

Immediately after the storm, the barbershop where he worked on Oak Street was closed, but the barbers kept working. “We were on the porch first, then we seen a business open,” Hunter said. “I was cutting hair from November to May for six months [on the porch].”

In his new shop, they now see about 30 students, who ask for Mohawks, tapered cuts, uneven Caesar cuts and wavelength cuts, Hunter said, finishing the last touches on the nursing major’s hair. He took the brush and dusted the man off with a satisfied look.

A block down from New Directions, Keith Habisreitinger, 44, changed the oil on a customer’s car at SpeeDee Oil Change & Tune-Up. The shop offers students a 10 percent discount on all services.

“We see quite a bit of students; they trickled in and out,” Habisreitinger said. “We get a lot of students from Tulane and Xavier – those are the most. It’s becoming more and it’s kind of always been that way right before school starts. Spring break and after school we get an influx of students.”

He estimated that out of 60 or 70 cars a day serviced, nine or 10 belonged to students.

“Right when Xavier reopened, we sponsored a few car washes for them on Saturdays,” Hunter added.

 Over by the Dillard campus, in a neighborhood where many buildings remain brown with dried mud, the Stop Jockin Barber & Beauty Salon makes itself stand out with rainbow-colored streamers, a red door and signs saying “We’re Open.”

“If it gets back to what it was [before Katrina], I’d see about 10 to 15 students a week,” said owner Jimmie Davis, who had to rebuild his shop. It reopened in January. He sees students from University of New Orleans, Dillard and Delgado Community College, he said.

The future of many businesses seems tied to the future of the universities, and their ability to attract new students.

For example, the combined enrollment of Xavier University’s graduate and undergraduate programs this fall is expected to be about 70 percent of last year’s enrollment, said Warren Bell, associate vice president for university and media relations. The incoming freshman class will be about half its normal size, about 500 freshmen compared to 1,000 last year, said Sondra Reine, associate director of admissions.

“Parents are taking a ‘wait and see’ attitude,” she said.

“They are asking, ‘What’s going on? What’s the city doing?’”

The school reopened in January after physical repairs were completed; dorms reopened and students were back in classes. Though most of the surrounding neighborhood is in shambles, Reine said students have two huge shopping areas nearby where they can buy supplies they need.

The situation is a little different at SUNO, which serves a large percentage of locally based students.

“Our students that would have come to SUNO moved to outlying parishes,” said Robert Thomas, the university enrollment manager. City high schools were closed, and the university lost a large segment of students because they lost their homes. Recently the Board of Regents reported an estimated 1,400 SUNO students left Orleans Parish and went to Jefferson. Students also went to neighboring parishes Terrebone, Plaquemines, St. John, St. Charles and St. Bernard.

So the university had to change its recruiting to target these students.

“Former students and those most likely to attend would attend no matter how far it is to come,” Thomas said. “We have a slight decline in numbers; however, we have 500 applications already, which is not far from the Fall 2005. We are up to 80 percent and that’s because of aggressive recruiting.”

Thomas said the university is allowing students to enroll online, and also to take online courses to earn credit toward their degrees.

“That has helped tremendously,” Thomas said. “I say right now we are doing just as well as before the hurricane.”

Regardless of the obstacles associated with living in New Orleans, each of the schools and many students reported that loyalty has remained strong.

Coleman, the incoming freshman who chose Dillard over Loyola, said she was determined to get into the historically black college and persistent as she applied, even as she was visiting Loyola.

“People would laugh because I’d fax Dillard stuff on Loyola’s office machines,” she said. “I would use their telephones and fax machines. I’d call and say, ‘Did you get this?’”

“Everything hasn’t been taken away from the city,” Coleman said.