10TULANE HULLABALOO

HVOLUME CXI NO. 2, AUGUST 27, 2015

Katrinathe anniversary issue

This photo, taken from an elevated perspective, shows the extent of flooding on Tulane University’s uptown campus and in surrounding neighborhoods. The majority of the flooding did not occur during Hurricane Katrina but rather when the levees breached 36 hours later.

courtesy of beau bisso

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For the Bisso family, Hurricane Ka-trina was expected to be a storm like many others. Fifth generation New Orleanians, William A. ‘Beau’ Bisso IV and his family went to the family business, Bisso Marine, to ride out the storm. Bisso’s wife is a Tulane gradu-ate, while Bisso himself is a graduate of Loyola University New Orleans. Bisso took shelter at Bisso Marine for many hurricanes in the past. They went to Bisso Marine’s offices on the banks of the Mississippi River in New Orleans to ride out the storm on Saturday, an-ticipating returning to their Uptown home a few days later. In the few days

after the storm, however, after review-ing the damage and flooding in Up-town, the Bissos decided to evacuate to Houston.

Bisso had surveyed his home and his parents’ home on Sunday immedi-ately following the storm and reported that everything looked okay. But when he returned, he noticed that water was slowly rising out of the drains, a result of the levee breach. Although Broad-way Street and Audubon Boulevard had been dry on Sunday, by Wednes-day there was flooding that reached the corner of Broadway and Maple streets.

“I get back to the office and I say, ‘Something crazy is going on around here … there is water, it wasn’t there yesterday and it’s there today,’” Bisso said. “It became abundantly clear at that point that, quite frankly some-thing was very fucked up in that this was not part of the normal post-hurri-cane routine in New Orleans.”

The family drove to Houston where they were able to find a hotel room. Friends helped them find a rental home and furniture. But as soon as the family was safe in Houston, Bisso called a meeting of his employees in the area and announced that he was heading back to New Orleans to help.

Bisso sent a vessel to Baton Rouge to transport volunteers back into New Orleans. One week after the storm, they arrived on the dock at the Bisso Marine location on the river in New Orleans early on Monday morning, nine days after the storm.

“Just as the sun was coming up in the predawn hours, watching the

amount of helicopters in the air was just unbelievable,” Bisso said. “There were probably 150 helicopters flying all over the place from the city and I said ‘My god, this is a war zone.’”

New Orleans didn’t just look like a war zone from the sky, according to Bisso. Looters ravaged many homes, breaking in and stealing what they could. Military personnel patrolled the streets, asking to see people’s licenses. The very few people who were allowed in the city were prepared for the poten-tial dangers.

“Everyone, and I mean everyone, was walking around with a sidearm or a shotgun or something,” Bisso said.

Basic provisions like food and water were not easily available to remaining residents. Grocery stores had been looted. Bisso would fly to Texas to col-lect water and MREs (Meals Ready-to-Eat) and return to New Orleans in the morning to do more work. He said that being in the city in the first few weeks after the storm was an unforgettable experience.

“It was like literally watching the most amazing historical event and living right in the middle of it … see-ing it and taking it all in and thinking man, this is insanely crazy and it’s ter-rible, and at the same time from the standpoint of the significance of some-thing-in-making, it was amazing to see,” Bisso said.

Bisso continued his trips between Houston and New Orleans for weeks before he eventually settled in Texas with his family. The family still lives in Texas.

by kate jamison, emily carmichael & ashley easterlyonline news editor, print news editor & senior staff reporter

Changed city, changed lives: Witnesses recount Hurricane Katrina

A few days before starting her senior year at Tulane, Lindsey Hoyt, a Tulane cheerleader, received a phone call from her dad asking her what she was going to do about the coming hurricane. Hoyt and a few of her friends loaded into a car and drove to Lake Charles, Louisiana.

“There were probably 40 of us at this house in Lake Charles,” Hoyt said. “I slept under the pool table, and we thought we were gonna be there for three or four days at max, and at that point, over the four years I was here, we had evacuated for hurricanes 5 times. At this point it was just ‘hurrication.’”

But while the students were wait-ing out the storm in Lake Charles, they watched footage of the storm on the news. Hoyt remembers watching the roof of the Mercedes-Benz Superdome coming off and thinking that this hurri-cane was not like the ones before. Even-tually the students sought alternative evacuation homes and Hoyt drove to her family’s house in Austin, Texas.

Hoyt was supposed to graduate from Tulane in December 2005. She enrolled

in art history courses at the University of Texas at Austin. At the end of the fall semester, she was one credit shy of grad-uating.

A few weeks after the storm hit, Hoyt returned to New Orleans to check on the damage to her off-campus apartment. When she arrived, she learned that the storm surge tore the roof off of her home, leaving her belongings completely ex-posed to the weather.

“I get into the house, everything is de-stroyed,” Hoyt said. “There is mold up all the walls, almost everything I owned was completely eaten by mold and the roof coming off and it [was] raining inside the house for two months.”

She returned to her New Orleans apartment on her way to Baton Rouge for Tulane’s homecoming football game at LSU’s Tiger Stadium.

“We were in [Tiger Stadium], and I remember a strip of Tulane people there, and I don’t even remember who we played, or if we won or lost,” Hoyt said. “For me it was not at all about that, it was just about being with the cheerleaders.

Everyone just felt very proud to be there at all, and grateful for LSU for using their stadium, even though we’re such bitter football rivals. It was just an important moment for us.”

A few months after their reunion at Tiger Stadium, the cheerleaders and the rest of the Tulane students returned to New Orleans in January 2006 for spring semester.

“After such a hard semester away, we were all so happy to be back,” Hoyt said. “And everyone was so relieved to be there and it was so different, almost like we had the city to ourselves in a real-ly sad way, but there were so few people around. It was really a college town for a while, and a search and rescue town, and a National Guard town and of course there were other people coming back at that point, but in our college world, it kind of felt like we were the only people in the city. I think it was just gratitude. It was pretty incredible.”

Hoyt graduated from Tulane in May of 2006. She now serves as an admissions counselor at the university.

2 AUGUST 27, 2015TULANE HULLABALOO

Former cheerleader finds unity in shared tragedy

Fifth generation New Orleanian recalls recovery efforts

Lindsey Hoyt poses for a photo.courtesy of lindsey hoyt

Beau Bisso poses for a photo.courtesy of beau bisso

WWW.TULANEHULLABALOO.COM NEWS 3

Neill Aguiluz moved into his dorm in Lallage Feazel Wall Residential College for his freshman year at Tulane on Aug. 25, 2005. Immediately after settling into his new home, he attended Convocation and was told by President Scott Cowen to pack up and leave. Two days later, Hurricane Ka-trina made landfall.

A Louisiana native, Aguiluz grew up in a family accustomed to the processes sur-rounding tropical storms and hurricanes, and did not expect much from the storm. Aguiluz evacuated to his home in Baton Rouge along with many extended family

members from the New Orleans area.“That morning I didn’t know there was

a hurricane coming at all,” Aguiluz said. “I doubted it was going to be anything; we’re from here so we figured we’d leave our stuff here, leave for a couple days and come right back.”

After the flooding receded, his fami-ly returned to assess the damage done to his paternal grandparents’ house in St. Bernard Parish near the Ninth Ward. His grandparents arrived to find their home completely destroyed.

“The water was two feet over their roof,” Aguiluz said. “When they went to go look at it and clean it out, it was basically a slab with a bunch of crap on it.”

Aguiluz enrolled in classes at LSU for the fall semester along with many other displaced Tulane students. Aguiluz said it took around three weeks after the storm before any schools disseminated official communications regarding enrolling else-where for the semester, which was compli-cated by the lack of information provided by Tulane.

“I just remember feeling really con-fused,” Aguiluz said. “It took a while before it was finalized, but then [LSU] had a reg-istration morning where we all piled into a room and sort of took whatever space was available. The whole process was kind of weird. We didn’t really know what was going on at the time.”

Once Tulane had a plan for the spring semester, former Tulane President Scott Cowen visited many universities to host town hall meetings with temporarily dis-placed Tulane students. Aguiluz attended

one of these meetings at LSU with around 40 other students.

“It was a good thing to calm everyone’s nerves,” Aguiluz said. “I think all of us at LSU felt kind of unwelcome so it was nice to be all together and know that we all went to Tulane and that we had an administra-tor.”

Cowen’s efforts to create a sense of com-munity among displaced Tulane students largely contributed to the unexpectedly high retention of students following the university’s closure.

“That was one of the things that my mom liked most about Tulane; she [said] ‘Oh, you can go to Tulane now, the presi-dent is amazing; I love him,’” Aguiluz said.

When he returned to Tulane for the spring semester, Aguiluz noticed few signs of wreckage on campus other than dead grass and damaged oak trees.

“Campus in general was pretty put-to-gether,” Aguiluz said. “It was once you got off campus in any direction for five min-utes when you started to see things missing and houses with windows gone and piles of trash everywhere.”

Aguiluz marched in the Tulane Univer-sity Marching Band in the spring semester. The band debuted during the Krewe of Alla Mardi Gras parade in the West Bank.

“[The parade] ended up being probably the most surreal experience,” Aguiluz said. “The West Bank had a lot of empty lots, so we did this whole long parade route. There weren’t many of us, and we’d go three or four blocks without seeing anybody. That was really when I had the realization like ‘Wow, this is strange.’”

The emotional aftermath of Hurricane Katrina affected many of Aguiluz’s peers in the marching band and beyond, and in-spired a call to action for many.

“I remember any time a picture or me-morial would pop up on the news, anyone in the band would just start tearing up,” Aguiluz said. “You would just need a mo-ment. On campus, everybody really felt like they needed to go out and do things so there were a lot of people going out and doing service.”

Aguiluz noticed a change in the spirit of Tulanians after the storm.

“I think that in the past, in the classes above mine, [students] liked New Orle-ans and felt like it was a cool place to hang out, but they didn’t necessarily feel all that connected to it,” Aguiluz said. “For better or worse Katrina kind of changed that and people felt a little bit more personal re-sponsibility.”

Aguiluz graduated from Tulane in May of 2009 with a degree in cell and molecular biology. He now serves as an undergradu-ate admissions counselor at the university.

In August 2005, Faye Tydlaska spent her time in Tulane’s libraries doing re-search and studying rare books for her dissertation in literature. By the end of the month, her year-and-a-half of research was loaded into the back of a Hyundai.

“I had several files in folders full of re-search,” Tydlaska said. “And that was prob-ably about ten pounds worth of research. So that took up the majority of my space, and the rest was just very few changes in clothing.”

Tydlaska had recently moved her grandmother out of the family home in the Lakeview neighborhood, which they had owned since the early 19th century,

and into a hospice care facility. Her sister and her sister’s husband were renovating the house. They planned to move in the following week.

Tydlaska decided to take an open seat in her sister’s hatchback, crammed in with her sister’s large stuffed animal deemed es-sential for the more than 20-hour trip.

Tydlaska and her family decided to make the trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee and stay in the Smoky Mountains. They thought the calm mountain atmosphere might help dull the stressful reality of their situation.

In Tydlaska’s Metarie home, where her husband stayed to ride out the storm, there was flooding due to the large amount of rain and the canals overflowing. Her house took in two inches of water before the eye of storm passed.

She called her husband to check in.“He was talking, and I was worried

because he sounded a little worried and usually he’s not,” Tydlaska said. “He’s like, ‘I need to go, the walls are moving.’”

The next day, Tydlaska watched the le-vees burst on TV. The images of her fellow New Orleanians congregating outside of the convention center, their homes now unlivable, haunted her throughout the night.

“But we have, right outside of our ho-tel, since it was it was in the mountains, a balcony that overlooked this mountain,” Tydlaska said. “And there was a beautiful stream the sort of rode in front of it so I was just kind of sitting out there. It’s like 3 a.m.”

Tydlaska repeatedly dialed her hus-band, trying to calm her anxiety. Through his grogginess, her husband told Tydlaska

that an oak tree had smashed her car, and that he was evacuating to Houston, where Tydlaska eventually met up with him.

The couple didn’t stay away long. Ty-dlaska’s husband owned a Wing Zone restaurant on the West Bank at the time. The couple received special permission to return early, something given to business deemed essential to recovery, like restau-rants.

“We had chicken and that’s all,” Tydlas-ka said. “We had chicken wings. That you can have chicken and one sauce and people were so thrilled that.”

The Tydlaskas returned to find their restaurant looted. It took them two weeks to get up and running.

“I remember seeing a whole bunch of flour, and the flour was just thrown,” Ty-dlaska said. “I mean it looks like snow all throughout the lobby. There were graffiti marks all along inside of the walls. Lot of things inside were smashed and turned over.”

Tydlaska’s family home, the same one her sister had almost finished renovating, was destroyed as well.

“That house looked like somebody had

picked it up, just shook it and threw it back down because everything was just not where — I mean it was it was insane the way that house looked.” Tydlaska said.

Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina, Ty-dlaska’s grandmother passed away. Going back to the house where she spent most of her time was an act of mourning for Tyd-laska and her family.

The day of the funeral, which also hap-pened to be Tydlaska’s birthday, was the last day Tydlaska set foot in her family house.

“I remember we took the flowers from from her grave and we threw it on top of everything,” Tydlaska said. “That was sort of the last image I have of the house. I didn’t go back after that.”

Tydlaska’s father sold the house exactly as it was. Today it has been converted into a duplex that the owner rents out as condos.

“The idea of permanence isn’t really real to me any longer because I’ve seen things,” Tydlaska said. “When you grow up seeing things the same way every day you don’t really expect that to change.”

Tydlaska credits the experience with her change in career path, choosing a job in Tulane’s admission office over a life work-ing in literature. She joined the admissions team nine months after Hurricane Katrina.

“It just gave me the time to think about this career and maybe if it was isolating for me,” Tydlaska said. “I wanted to get in-volved in something that got me in front of people, that seemed to be doing something good for the city and that’s kind of how ad-mission came about.”

Today Tydlaska is the Director of Un-dergraduate Admission at Tulane and the Vice President for Enrollment.

Losses inspire change in alum’s life path

Parade provides intimate glimpse of storm’s devastation

Neill Aguiluz poses for a photo.courtesy of neill aguiluz

Faye Tydlaska poses for a photo.courtesy of faye tydlaska

“The idea of permanence isn’t really real to me any longer because I’ve seen

things.”

“On campus, everybody really felt like they needed to go out and do things so there were a lot of people going out and doing ser-

vice.”

WWW.TULANEHULLABALOO.COM NEWS 5

After enduring a struggle a decade ago to safely escape New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, freshman Lauren Bourgeois is more than happy to be back

in the city.Bourgeois is no stranger to Tulane – her

father, grandfather and grandmother are all proud alumni with long-reaching roots at the university. Green button-downs and a scarf marked with vintage Tulane logos, acquired from family, are tucked in her dorm closet.

Having lived most recently in nearby Thibodaux, Louisiana, Bourgeois and her family were living in Raceland, about an hour’s drive from New Orleans, when the storm hit 10 years ago.

Warnings about the impending storm pervaded the area. Bourgeois’ father, how-ever, a member of the National Guard who still serves today, was unsure whether his services would be needed.

“They weren’t sure how bad it was going to be,” Lauren Bourgeois said.

It was not until the day before the storm made landfall that Bourgeois, her mother, brother and sister finally evacuated to San Antonio, Texas. Her father stayed behind, reporting to Jackson Barracks to aid in hu-man recovery.

“They had him on lifeboats in the water, finding people stranded on the roofs, or

whatever people needed help with,” Bour-geois said. “He was down there for weeks. He didn’t actually come home for good for about two months.”

Bourgeois herself was only about 8 years old when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. She does not struggle, however, to enumerate the many worries she was forced to carry with her as she faced the potential loss of her father and her home.

“I was scared to have a parent there, [in the storm],” Bourgeois said. “I couldn’t be-lieve it was happening, but I was still old enough to know it was going on. I knew I might not have a house anymore, and I was nervous to come back home, and worried about all my toys.”

Bourgeois’ family also had the roof torn from the top of their home.

“Everything looked like a jungle, with roofing shingles all down the road,” Lauren Bourgeois said.

Bourgeois’ father returned safely from his service in the city, but not without feel-ing the burdens of intense loss and suffer-ing experienced by civilians.

“He wasn’t the same for a while,” Lauren Bourgeois said. “After seeing people whose

homes were destroyed, and losing their loved ones … it affects a person.”

Bourgeois’ father also spent time serv-ing in Iraq prior to Hurricane Katrina, and Lauren Bourgeois said that the experience of the hurricane was “equally traumatic, if not worse.”

The physical rebuilding process is a long-term effort that still persists across the city today.

“It’s been slow, but steady,” Lauren Bourgeois said about New Orleans’ recov-ery progress. “It took a long time for the restaurants to open. Waiting for stuff to re-open, it took years, just waiting for people rebuild.”

Thibodaux, Bourgeois’ hometown, is still working to recover as well.

“Even now I still see blue tarps on hous-es,” Bourgeois said. “They never got re-paired.”

Bourgeois, holding close the experienc-es of her father and the change viewable over a decade, is optimistic about what the future contains.

“There was nothing we could have done to prevent it,” Bourgeois said. “And I’m young. My life’s not over.”

Freshman student recalls experiencing hurricane as childby alexa christiansoncontributing reporter

Lauren Bourgeois, freshman, poses for a photo.

by avery fiftal | photo editor

This past Saturday, 1,730 new students were welcomed to Tulane University at Convocation. On this momentous occa-sion ten years ago, however, the ceremony was a little different. Instead of wearing his formal robes, President Emeritus Scott Cowen sported bermuda shorts and a T-shirt.

Instead of rushing students in to their first days as Tulane students, Cowen rushed them out.

“Welcome to Tulane University,” Cow-en said. “We were formed in 1834. We’re a fabulous place, we’re delighted to have you here and we’re so delighted to have you here that we have to send you home for four days.”

By Sunday, the entire campus had evac-uated except for about 40 faculty and staff that chose to ride out the storm in the Reily Student Recreation Center, as well as about 200 physicians and faculty at the down-town campus hospital.

“I remember it very, very vividly, how horrific it was,” Cowen said about how he and his colleagues stayed in the stairwell away from the windows in case they blew out. “You couldn’t even see outside the Rei-ly Center because the wind and the rain was actually going horizontal, not vertical but horizontal, it was raining so hard.”

Immediately after the storm, early Monday afternoon, Cowen drove around campus in a golf cart assessing the damage. The initial damage consisted of shattered windows, displaced roof tiles and broken tree limbs.

Later that same day, the levees breached. Cowen and his colleagues spent another night in Reily. The flooding came within 36 hours.

“Where the football stadium is now, there was about three feet of water,” Cowen said. “The water was from back on campus all the way to Freret Street and from Broad-way all the way to Calhoun.”

In the 97 degree heat, Cowen and his team lost all power, water and cellphone service.

“That’s when we knew that this was way beyond anything we had ever compre-hended,” Cowen said.

In the days after the flooding, Cowen motored around campus in a boat to find food and water. He ultimately broke into Bruff Commons.

“We didn’t have enough provisions to last us but a few days,” Cowen said.

Cowen then received a text from his youngest daughter, his first communica-

tion in days. As it was 2005 at the time, the text caught Cowen off-guard.

“I didn’t know what texting was … I had no idea,” Cowen said. “I just saw my phone went off and I was shocked it was my daughter. She became my first lifeline because of texting and that’s how I learned how to text.”

Cowen evacuated the campus after five days.

“It is true I took a boat, it is true I took a golf cart, it is true that we took a dump truck and we ran it through the fence at Audubon Park and we caught a helicopter

on the Mississippi River,” Cowen said.

That Friday night, he and his team relo-cated to Houston to begin recovery plans.

“For all intents and purposes, Tulane University did not exist,” Cowen said.

According to Cowen, three quarters of the Uptown campus was flooded and com-munication had been lost between the Up-town and downtown staff.

Former President Cowen reflects on days following Hurricane Katrinaby tess reily

contributing reporter

READ THE REST ONLINETULANEHULLABALOO.COM

Former President Scott Cowen stops for an interview on campus shortly after Hurricane Katrina. Unlike students, Cowen stayed at Tulane for the duration of the storm before relocating to Houston .

by david murphy | senior staff photographer emeritus

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Armed with an innovative and quick-thinking workforce, the Tulane City Center is far from shy when it comes to opening its arms to understaffed, under-funded or overlooked community part-ners. This commitment blossomed follow-ing the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina.

For the past 10 years, Tulane architec-ture students and faculty have engaged with, listened to, supported and cooperat-ed with nonprofit organizations in the city to provide them services such as graphic display and design-building.

Project Manager Emilie Taylor Welty, who has been with the Tulane City Cen-ter since 2006, is confident yet humble about Tulane City Center’s progress with post-Katrina rehabilitation.

“We actually didn’t start doing projects until after the storm hit,” Welty said. “[Be-fore], the idea was that we could be doing projects in the community, but we didn’t really know what that meant.”

Once Hurricane Katrina made landfall, however, Tulane City Center committed itself to aiding smaller community groups and has not looked back. They participated in events like Reinhabiting NOLA, a con-ference which brought 150 residents, local and national universities, area nonprofit leaders and more to discuss a communi-ty-based vision for the future of New Or-leans.

“We tried to talk with the people on the grounds about what it would take to recov-er,” Welty said. “A lot of conversations were happening amongst politicians and ‘high-

er-level’ people at that early stage. There weren’t a lot of conversations happening with community groups about what they needed.”

The City Center’s enthusiasm for sus-tainable design and architecture aided re-covery efforts. Staff and volunteers with the City Center offered services looking at properties around the city that were badly damaged by the storm, as well as catalog-ing empty and vacant lands.

Tulane Architecture students have built around 40 projects in the city so far, includ-ing about 10 houses and 20 or 30 indepen-dent community structures.

“While small, [they] have made a real-ly long-lasting impact in the communities that they are in,” Welty said. “It’s not like rebuilding entire segments of the city, but being really thoughtful and meaningful about small projects that can make a big difference.”

The Tulane City Center also holds a strong philosophy about why they help the nonprofit, often grassroots organizations, that they do.

“I think that often times, professionals and experts think they know what com-munities need and I think that what we try to do is make sure the voices of the com-munity members are heard and under-stood,” Welty said. “Our communities are the experts, and in most cases, they know what they need more than anyone.”

Indeed, many community members and small nonprofits have had their voice and decision-making abilities stifled by various barriers since Hurricane Katrina.

“We think it’s more important than ever here, 10 years from the storm, that the

community is part of efforts to shape our city,” Welty said. “We want to make sure that everyone has a voice, not just the peo-ple with the money.”

Current projects of the Tulane City Center include Grow Dat Youth Farm, an urban farm that employs dozens of disad-vantaged high school students and teaches them valuable job and life skills, and Tran-sitional Spaces, a group of skateboarders who help plan and construct a piece of a skate park in the city.

“One common theme is that we’re try-ing to make our city better through … re-ally innovative and excellent design,” Welty said. “It’s working with groups of multiple scales.”

Welty emphasized the nonprofits around the city who are always eager to have volunteers aid in their projects, whether the commitment be a weekend or several weeks of involvement. Tulane student groups have been known to devote time to rehabilitative and innovative proj-ects in the city.

Welty’s own personal outlook on the recovery of New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina is realistic, yet determined.

“I think we’ve made some really great strides towards recovery, but it’s been an inequitable recovery in some ways and something we’re all still working on, and hopefully we can get to a point where ev-eryone’s in a really good spot,” Welty said.

by alexa christiansoncontributing reporter

Tulane City Center teams up to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina

The LOOP Pavillion, designed by Tulane City Center, serves as a shaded canopy in City Park. Tulane City Center has designed around 40 projects throughout the city.

courtesy of david armentor

then

& n

ow

by david murphy | senior staff photographer emeritus

by david murphy | senior staff photographer emeritus

by avery fiftal | photo editor

Right: Three quarters of campus took on floodwaters. Some

parts of campus were unsafe to occupy.

Middle: The Diboll Parking Garage was

in the part of campus with thte most

flooding. The back of campus was covered in three feet of water.

Bottom: A repaired Diboll Parking Garage

is filled with cars ten years after Katrina.

Top left: The tennis courts at Reily Recreation Center remain in the same location as pre-Katrina.

Top: A boat that was used during the hurricane sits in front of the Reily tennis courts after the floodwaters drained.

Left: The mail center at Tulane flooded. Water lines can be seen against the walls.

Bottom left: After Katrina blew through, the majority of damage to campus was downed trees. The levees broke 36 hours after the storm and the campus started to flood.

Bottom: McAlister Auditorium was repaired and refurbished post-Katrina damage.

by david murphy | senior staff photographer emeritus

by david murphy | senior staff photographer emeritus

by david murphy | senior staff photographer emeritus

by avery fiftal | photo editor

by will potts | photo editor

VIEWSAUGUST 27, 201510

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Alexia Chatfieldpersonnel director

EDITORIAL BOARD

Kate JamisonEmily Carmichael

news editors

Sam ErginaTyler Mead

arcade editors

Kathryne LeBellviews editor

Mackenna BarkerJordan Figueredo

sports editors

Angelica NahalkaMaricela Murillo

Bess TurnerCopy Editors

Lily MilwitAly Buffett

Regina LoBiondolayout editors

Will PottsAvery Fiftal

Photography Editor

Lauren KeenanSpencer MannConnor Alston

Video Producers

Alex PassikoffAds Layout Editor

Ashley Easterlyrecruitment and Training

coordinator

Brandi Doyalmarketing manager

Armando Marinadvertising manager

The current staff of The Tulane Hul-labaloo was not in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit 10 years ago. We were in junior high schools across the United States and did not experience the storm or the aftermath. We want to use this issue to inform the Tulane commu-nity that was not here about what hap-pened through the first-hand stories of people who were. We also want to thank those who worked diligently to bring the campus and the city back.

The 2005 staff had just finished its first edition of the year when the mandatory evacuation went out, and they evacuated just like every other student. The 2005-06 Editor-in-Chief Kate Schafer left for the University of Pennsylvania, but she did not forget about The Hullabaloo or Tulane. The Hullabaloo resumed pub-lishing online on Sept. 30 from around the country and even the world, as one editor was in London. Even after Tulane reopened, the staff fought to keep the paper running amid readjusting to life in post-Katrina New Orleans. Some more local staffers, like David Murphy, whose photos are used in this issue, came to campus to report on its status.

As they fought to keep the newspa-per running, countless more fought to reopen Tulane and bring New Orleans back to what it was. This is not to say that everything was perfect after the city reopened. The Tulane administra-tion cut many academic and athletic programs. Tulane absorbed Newcomb College. Many houses, families and lives were destroyed.

There are countless stories and narra-tives of the Katrina experience. We in-tend to tell a handful of these stories in this issue.

Thank you to The Hullabaloo staff of 2005-06 and the years after for fighting to keep the paper running. Thank you to The Daily Pennsylvanian for giving our Editor-in-Chief space to work. Thank you to student media at Vanderbilt Uni-versity for driving Mac computers and software down to our makeshift news-room. Thank you to the advocates of Tulane and New Orleans for everything that they did. Without these people, to-day’s Tulane students would not be able to experience The Hullabaloo, Tulane and New Orleans as we do. For that we are grateful.

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

The Hullabaloo’s Katrina story

New Orleans is a smaller, wealthi-er and whiter city than it was at the beginning of 2005. Hurricane Katrina brought about a wave of effects that led to a different environment and dis-tribution of residents within the city.

In August of 2005, roughly 1.5 mil-lion people along the Gulf Coast were displaced. Before the storm, the New Orleans population stood at nearly half a million — now it hovers slight-ly below 400,000. This is understand-able; the city was in shambles, without the infrastructure or homes to support a large number of residents. Many feared that the city would become a ghost town.

But those fears carried little weight. Residents and newcomers returned, bringing new life and industry to the

city. Even so, there are approximate-ly 75,000 fewer black residents than before the storm, reducing the total black population in the city from two-thirds to less than 60 percent.

There is a number of reasons why this occurred. People of color contin-ue to make up the majority of the poor and homeless population in the city. Traveling is expensive and returners to the city found higher rental rates, less available public housing and little restoration efforts in predominately black neighborhoods such as New Or-leans East and the Ninth Ward.

Most of the public housing in the city was destroyed and never rebuilt. Rental rates in 2009 were 40 percent higher than in 2005.

Furthermore, Amnesty Interna-tional found that residents in non-white neighborhoods were paid less to return to the city. This was doubtfully intentional, but the effects are clear. Nearly 82 percent of white residents returned, as compared to 54 percent of black residents.

This carries more weight than just affecting the race ratio in the city. A large number of the population that

did not return made up the black mid-dle class. With the rehaul of the school system, thousands of school employ-ees, many of them black, were fired. Though a number were rehired, this still served to decimate the black mid-dle class.

Few efforts were made to explicit-ly correct this issue. Even with all of the other mistakes made during and after the storm, this discrepancy is not small enough to sweep under the rug. The lack of effort in bringing this at-risk population back is deplorable. It reinforces the lack of equality and no-tice of these inequalities.

Now, the impoverished in the city are still majority black, but the middle class is disproportionally white. This imbalance has led to risk of gentrifica-tion and a change in the very culture of New Orleans. Without the people that make this the city that it is, we can only hope that the next generation can experience the beautiful, wild city that we do today.

Kathryne is a junior at New-comb-Tulane College. She can be reached at klebell@tulane.edu.

KATHRYNELEBELL

VIEWS EDITOR

New Orleans’ black population still displaced

11AUGUST 27, 2015 VIEWS

FEMA funds used improperly

This month, we look back at Hur-ricane Katrina. This period is remem-bered for two aspects of reconstruc-tion: objectively terrible federal policy and heroic grassroots humanitarian aid.

At Tulane University, the rebuild was funded by a $36.1 million audit from the Federal Emergency Manage-ment Agency. This money was provid-ed early on with the intention of get-ting Tulane up and running again as quickly as possible. Even with a city in shambles and thousands of people dis-placed, substantial federal grants were allocated to this private university.

And indeed, six months later Tulane was re-opened for spring semester.

Years later, people began to notice an issue with this deal. Of the audit, $13 million was unaccounted for. After an open investigation, FEMA uncov-ered that this discrepancy mainly came from a scam from Belfor, a contracting company specializing in disaster relief.

The main issue in this situation, however, was not how well the state of Louisiana monitored Tulane’s spending as they rebuilt with the federal grant. The problem was that this money was

granted in the first place.Despite the substantial aid that Tu-

lane benefitted from, taxpayer dollars should not be presented to a private university. It is not the federal govern-ment or FEMA’s responsibility to fund a private institution.

While FEMA argued that Tulane had misused $13 million in funds, in reality FEMA misused $36.1 million. America and FEMA had other respon-sibilities that deserved holistic focus. New Orleans’ infrastructure was dec-imated and this state of disorder ex-tended along the Gulf coast.

In the years since the storm, Tulane students have been helpful in giving back to New Orleans. They were among the ranks of people coming in to assist in reconstruction. They joined in the community and strove to rebuild.

It took years for some areas to be re-stored. Had those funds been allocated to the city rather than the university, more could have been done. This is a quintessential case of the federal gov-ernment not focusing properly on the task at hand. New Orleans had im-mense support, but not enough.

Tulane does not deserve federal au-dits. Tulane, as a private institution, is responsible for funding itself. New Orleans needed assistance and the gov-ernment provided it, but clearly gov-ernment spending during the rebuild was reckless and exorbitant.

Sarah is a freshman at Newcomb-Tu-lane College. She can be reached at ssi-mon7@tulane.edu.

SARAHSIMON

CONTRIBUTING REPORTER

Ten years ago, Hurricane Katrina struck the Louisiana coastline in what was one of the most disastrous natural events in recent history. Coincidental-ly, roughly 1,900 square miles of sur-rounding wetlands have been lost to the Gulf of Mexico since the ‘30s. As it stands, there is very strong cause to believe that these two facts are intrin-sically linked.

This land plays a crucial part in act-ing as a buffer between the Gulf and the working coastline. Indeed, every 2.7 miles of wetlands absorbs one foot of storm surge. Preserving this land is essential to the continued existence of our city.

Each year, 25 to 35 square miles of coastal land is lost and many are at fault for the rapid loss of land. This includes, to some extent, Tulane University.

Rather than preserving the coast-al landmass, a percentage of Tulane

endowment goes towards oil corpo-rations, major actors in the continued deterioration of the wetlands. South Louisiana is the source of 18 percent of U.S. oil and 24 percent of U.S. natural gas. The corporate interests in the re-gion are very strong, making the halt of industrial activity very difficult.

By blocking the river with levees, dams and canals, sediment is prevented from reaching the delta and wetlands, as the Gulf continues to wear away the existing landmass. With no changes to the existing system, it is predicted an amount of land the area size of Rhode Island will be underwater by 2050.

In the past, there have been a num-ber of attempts to recreate the natural defense that the Mississippi River once provided. Coast 2050 was an initiative introduced in 1996 by a combination of federal agencies, parish officials and community members. Its intended goal was to divert some of the river’s flow back into the delta via pipelines and canals.

At this point, Coast 2050 has most-ly been dismissed, for various reasons. But immediate action is still required to correct for the damage that has oc-curred over the past century.

Ignoring the loss of this land could increase the impact of storms like Hur-

ricane Katrina. Since July, federal and state governments have been arguing over where the $2.9 billion required to restore the Mississippi River-Gulf Out-let, a now unused shipping channel, is going to come from. This restoration is the most likely first step in shoring up the Louisiana coastline.

Given the commercial interests of the oil and gas industries, as well as an influx of residents as New Orleans continues to grow in size and renown, it may be difficult to completely stop all coastal land loss. The MR-GO res-toration is currently the best means to recovery.

It could be argued that the portion of university endowment invested in oil corporations could instead go to-wards these restoration efforts.

There is a movement protesting this continued use of Tulane University’s money. Divest Tulane, a student-run organization, has actively protested this with little meaningful response from the university administration. The university, through its public re-lations department, has expressed the importance of oil corporations to the local economy.

Not to say the local economy should be disregarded. Indeed, a common ar-gument against withdrawing oil and

gas from the coastline is a massive loss of jobs. Unfortunately, when the sea level rises by another four to nine feet, the local economy will lose more than just jobs.

Hurricane Katrina serves as a con-stant reminder of this grim potential outcome. The improperly designed and incomplete levee system constructed was intended to be able to withstand heavy flooding, but it failed. Had the miles of land buffer still existed, the le-vees would not have even been needed.

The Louisiana state government has intended to sue the Army Corps of En-gineers for its failure in completing the Pontchartrain Hurricane Protection Project within a reasonable time frame, causing the flooding associated with Hurricane Katrina. This is one poten-tial source for the funding required to MR-GO restoration.

Some argue that oil, gas and other corporations with unsustainable inter-ests in the region should pay for resto-rations.

Regardless, if initiatives are not tak-en soon, it is likely we will see another tragic natural disaster befall our city and, in turn, our university.

Kathryne is a junior at Newcomb-Tu-lane College. She can be reached at kle-bell@tulane.edu.

Continued loss of coastal land risks natural disasterKATHRYNELEBELL

VIEWS EDITOR

Instagram of the Week

mikus31 Reminders of Katrina still dot the landscape in southeast Louisiana. The passage of time and its accompanying erosion yield fewer and fewer physical reminders. But still, you don’t have to look very hard to find them. It’s only been 10 years. They’re there. Like the ones that jut out for long stretches over water. The old things that be-came new. There was no other choice. Storms like Katrina hasten that process. Painfully. How long will these monuments stand? The old ones that remain, resiliently, defiantly, and the new ones too. Maybe they’ll stand for a long time. Maybe they’ll stand for as long as they’re designed to stand. Maybe. Or maybe not. | Slidell, Louisiana

mikus31

ARCADEAUGUST 27, 201512

David Morris can still remember the day he saw the destruction Hurricane Katrina caused to his hometown, New Orleans. Afterwards, when he stepped into a house in Monroe, Louisiana, he felt like he was walking into a war-torn country.

A decade has passed, and Morris is now the exec-utive director at Evacuteer, a nonprofit that focuses on emergency evacuation for New Orleans. With the or-ganization’s new Love, Write, Light campaign, Morris is helping give New Orleans a brighter future. Love, Write, Light is a letter-writing campaign created by Evacuteer, in partnership with Dear World and Arts Council New Orleans, which hopes to raise enough money to install lights at each and every Evacuteer evacuation site sculp-ture.

“The premise is right there in the title,” Morris said. “Even if this place has broken your heart, if you’ve ever loved New Orleans we want you to write your story in the form of a love note to the city, and then if you’re able you can make a contribution towards our efforts to light the Evacuspots.”

The Evacuspots serve as waypoints in case of an emergency evacuation ordered by the mayor. It’s where citizens can gather to be taken to a secure shelter with their entire family. This initiative replaces the plan during Katrina in which 25,000 people stayed in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome for shelter.

“What a lot of people don’t realize is that they are never going to open up the Superdome as a shelter for people to go to ever again,” Morris said.

New Orleans natives and those who’ve moved here have been sending their love to the city on the Love, Write, Light website. The words of celebrities like Emer-il Lagasse and Steve Gleason mix with the average citi-zen. The letters are heartfelt and tear-jerking, with titles ranging from, “New Orleans, you have my heart” to, “I hate that I love you so much.” The connection people have to this city is something stronger than words can fully define.

“I hate that you are so deep in my soul that I can’t bare to leave you,” Rick Keyser, a contributor to the cam-paign, writes in his letter.

For many Tulane students Katrina is more of a sto-ry. We come from different states, countries and conti-nents, and most didn’t live it. We see the aftermath, and hear about tomorrow. We love this city, and the locals welcome us, and share everything that makes New Or-leans special to us. Understanding what the people of this city have gone through is essential for living here.

“People love this city like they love a family mem-ber, and you saw that in the way that people fought to bring it back,” Morris said. “They fought tooth and nail to bring it back and they were willing to do anything it took to bring their loved one back from the brink, and there are some strong parallels when you watch families go through their difficult times with a particular family member in a way that the others kind of rally around.”

Evacuteer built beacons dedicated to a better future for New Orleans. Love, Write, Light wants everyone to see themselves as part of that future.

by tyler meadprint arcade editor

Love notes to city support ‘Evacuspot’ sculptures

avery fiftal | photo editor

“Even if this place has broken your heart, if you

love New Orleans we want you to write your story...”

David MorrisEvacuteer Executive Director

WWW.TULANEHULLABALOO.COMARCADE13

“As soon as I arrived here, I just immediately connected with the place,” award-winning pho-tojournalist Leon Morris said. His book, “Hom-age,” which will be released shortly, contains 30 years of passionate music photography, includ-ing documentation of the 20 years surrounding Hurricane Katrina that he spent in New Orleans. The New Orleans Healing Center will also be hosting Morris’ work until the end of the month.

Morris grew up in Australia and started his photography career in London, where he con-tributed to publications such as “The Guardian” and “The Observer.” His deep love of music, however, soon drew him to New Orleans.

“I found it extraordinary in so many ways, the talent and extraordinary musicianship that is in this town,” Morris said. “All of a sudden the his-torical interest I had in music started to make a lot of sense.”

Morris traveled to New Orleans for the first time in 1994 on the recommendation of a col-league, unknowingly beginning an annual trip that would span decades. Morris now considers New Orleans his cultural anchor.

“Music has always been critically important in my life,” Morris said. “And being able to come

by bess turnersenior staff reporter

Music through the lens: Memories of the last two decades

by cadence neenancontributing reporter

According to Mike Casey, owner and opera-tor of Liberty Cheesesteaks and member of the Board of Directors of Freret Street, when he went to Tulane from 2002 to 2006, Freret Street was only known for being a slightly quicker bus route to more important locations—like Mardi Gras parties.

That was a decade ago, and Freret Street is now the destination for Tulane students looking for local nightlife outside The Boot.

“It was unbelievable, the changes,” Casey said. “Just kind of rampant growth.”

Today, Freret is a hub for chic commercial-ism—gourmet hot dog stands, uniquely upscale cocktail bars, boutiques, coffee shops, yoga stu-dios: the works. Even freshmen know Freret is the place to be these days.

“[It] seems like a really good option to find some really cool places,” Campbell said. “The restaurants, and just the general scene.”

The Freret Street vibe comes from a united dedication to bettering the area from each busi-ness owner. The key to Freret Street’s successful rebound was the strong sense of community that business owners created following Hurricane Ka-trina.

“It’s reflective of New Orleans, the unique diverse microculture of that area,” Bill DiPaola, chief operating officer of Dat Dog, said.

Dat Dog has three locations—one on French-man Street in the French Quarter, one on the popular shopping haven Magazine Street and one on Freret Street.

“We love serving great food, but there’s a vibe that’s also hand-in-hand with how we do busi-ness,” DiPaola said. “And I think Freret Street was absolutely instrumental in making it.”

To all Tulane students, the shops and environ-ment of Freret Street are a cornerstone of the Tu-lane experience. According to Casey, Tulane has been able to help Freret Street become the social center it is today.

“Tulane is the reason we’re here in a big, big way,” Casey said.

courtesy of michaela cotoia

The full exhibit for Leon Morris’ “Homage” can be seen until Sunday at the New Orleans Healing Center.

avery fiftal | photo editor

back, at least on an annual basis, gave me a sort of central anchor point to allow me to live the rest of my life knowing that there was this constant sort of cultural connection that I could tap back into.”

In New Orleans, as in Australia, Morris brings with him a very particular style of photography. His ultimate goal, to remove the photographer from the work as much as possible, and to hon-estly display the point of view of the subject, has been showcased in photographs of subjects from Ray Charles to Dr. John.

“It’s impossible to get rid of the relationship of the photographer and the subject,” Morris said. “As far as possible, my approach to photography is to reduce the distance between the subject and the photographer and to represent their views as honestly and as realistically as possible.”

Morris’ 30-year “Homage” project is a love let-ter to New Orleans music and culture.

“Really that’s what it’s about to me, is trying to expose as many people as possible to the fact that New Orleans is this incredibly important part of our collective cultural history,” Morris said. “Be-ing able to go back and explain that and be excited about it again and again and again is something that gives me a lot of joy.”

You can see “Homage New Orleans” until Sunday at the New Orleans Healing Center on St. Claude Avenue.

on corner of Renaissance

14AUGUST 27, 2015 SPORTS

Consequences of Katrina prompt athletic program growth

10 buses to Birmingham: Change in evacuation route Katrina athletes to be inducted in hall of fame

The 308 athletes that repre-sented Tulane in the 2005-06 athletic seasons will be induct-ed into the Tulane Athletic Hall of Fame at this year’s homecom-ing game against Connecticut. These athletes not only fought to provide hope to the people of New Orleans but also to pre-serve the integrity of athletics at Tulane.

On Saturday, Aug. 27, 2005, Tulane athletes and coaches were ushered away from cam-pus to Houston for what they thought would be a short “hur-rication.” But as devastating re-ports of the impact Hurricane Katrina had on New Orleans were revealed, the Board of Tu-lane decided not to open the university’s doors during the 2005 fall semester.

“Normally, [these evacuation stays] would only be [of] a 24- to 48-hour variety,” Director of Athletics Rick Dickson said. “We had to make a decision about what this meant for us.”

The group of 308 decided to

continue to be contenders on others’ fields and courts, play-ing all of their home games in facilities across the country.

“Like any catastrophe, you kick into another gear,” Dick-son said. “And it was like, OK, we are alive. We know that we can do this. Let’s do something about it.”

Dickson told the athletes to be the face of Tulane and repre-sent the school well during this tragic time, and most impor-tantly, to carry the torch.

This group of athletes ac-complished that goal by fight-ing through the tough times of adjusting to being guest of four different campuses, which in-cluded SMU, Louisiana Tech, Texas A&M and Texas Tech.

“Our football team played in 11 cities,” Dickson said. “Sports like volleyball and basketball were playing in all road match-es.”

The athletes would practice either early in the morning or at the end of the day to stay out of their hosts’ way. Their entire season was out of their control and depended on the schedule

of their hosts rather than their coaching staff.

Some of the universities providing facilities to Tulane opened up vacant buildings to serve as dorms and accommo-dations for the athletes.

“We wanted to be the ones that kind of rose from the ash-es and showed the people that there is hope and there is life,” Dickson said. “[We wanted to ensure that] people didn’t for-get about Tulane, New Orleans or what had happened.”

“We wouldn’t have a new baseball stadium, a Hertz Cen-ter, a new fieldhouse, a new Yulman Stadium and be in the American Athletic Conference if it were not for those 308 ath-letes,” Dickson said.

For their contribution to Tu-lane athletics and their heroic efforts, the group of 308 ath-letes will be inducted into the Tulane Athletic Hall of Fame Friday, Nov. 6 on Benson Field in Yulman Stadium and will be presented at the homecoming football game against UConn the following day.

by samantha shafia contributing reporter

Student athletes eat and sleep at Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi.

courtesy of tulane athletics

WWW.TULANEHULLABALOO.COMSPORTS15

In August 2005 Hurricane Katrina decimated the city of New Orleans, re-sulting in the forced closing of Tulane University for a semester. The athletes facing the adversity of home seasons away continued to honor Tulane and aided in reestablishing hope in the New Orleans community. The Green Wave continued to compete across the coun-try.

Unfortunately, not all Tulane ath-letic teams were given the go-ahead to compete during Katrina. The university suspended eight teams in order to save approximately $2 million.

The NCAA and Conference USA granted Tulane the right to compete in the conference under the 16-team min-imum. Of the 16 sport teams offered at the time, only eight remained. These teams included baseball, football, men’s and women’s basketball, women’s vol-leyball, women’s cross country, women’s indoor track and field, and women’s out-door track and field.

With the clear imbalance of men and women sports teams the NCAA had to implement Title IX in order for Tulane to be in compliance with the law.

Title IX is a “comprehensive federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded edu-cation program or activity,” according to the Department of Justice.

Tulane was given five years to in-crease the total amount of sports teams back to 16 with an even divide between men and women teams to prevent an in-fraction with Title IX and the NCAA.

The Green Wave slowly gained teams by adding women’s tennis, women’s golf, men’s cross country and men’s out-door track and field in 2008, followed by women’s swimming and diving and men’s tennis in 2009. In the 2010 school-year sand volleyball and women’s bowl-ing were added to get the total back to 16.

Despite Hurricane Katrina uprooting both Tulane and New Orleans, the ath-letic teams remained united. Ten years later there are 16 sports but still just one team, the Green Wave.

by chandler daddario contributing reporter

Consequences of Katrina prompt athletic program growth

10 buses to Birmingham: Change in evacuation routeby susan fanelli

contributing reporter

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina swept through the Gulf Coast, putting nearly 80 percent of the city of New Orleans underwater and costing an estimated $100 billion in damage.

For Tulane Athletics, the seasons never started. A mandatory evacuation was issued for the city,

scattering the athletes to Jackson State in Jackson, Mississippi. Subsequent storms created power loss and isolated friends and family.

“I think the hardest thing about 10 years ago was watching it all unfold on TV and knowing we can’t go home,” Executive Associate Athletic Director Brandon Macneill said. “There was no blueprint. This has never happened to anyone before.”

Now, 10 years after the hurricane, much has

changed for the sports teams that play during the waning weeks of hurricane season. With so much destruction left in the wake of the Hurricane Ka-trina, new policies were in order.

Tulane’s fall athletes were dispersed across half of the country. The football team went to Louisiana Tech. Soccer journeyed to Texas A&M. The teams were all competing far away from home. Today, this would not be the case, as new policies have man-dated that student-athletes competing in fall sports must evacuate together should another hurricane hit. 10 buses are set aside for the athletic teams so they may all travel together.

The teams’ destinations have changed as well. Instead of going north, where the storms could still affect them, teams must now choose to evacuate to the east or to the west.

After the storm’s end, members of the upper administration would investigate and report if the school were safe to open.

Such policies were already put into practice in 2008, when Hurricane Gustav swept through New Orleans and another mandatory evacuation was issued. This time, rather than head north to Mississippi, the teams all traveled to Birmingham, Alabama. There, the football team opened their season. The athletes all returned to Tulane a week later.

“It’s efficient and streamlined and very well communicated,” Macneill said.

A large difference can be seen with the two evac-uations, even though they were only three years apart. A safe way of transportation for athletes has been tested and it works.

“In hindsight, was it the best thing, was it not?” Macneill said when asked about the Katrina evac-uation. “I think our student-athletes, even though it was so challenging, would say it was. They didn’t want to give up. [With] the policy now … I don’t think that would happen again.”

PROGRAM GROWTH

EVACUATION

Following Tulane hurricane protocol, athletes evacuate campus and head to Jackson, Mississippi.

2008-2009• Women’s

Tennis• Women’s

Golf

2009-2010• Women’s

Swimming & Diving

2010-2011• Women’s

Sand Volley-ball

• Women’s Bowling

2008-2009• Men’s Cross

Country• Men’s out-

door track

and field

2009-2010• Men’s Tennis

In order to secure NCAA Division I status, Tulane added teams in accordance with Title IX.

infographic by aly buffett

courtesy of Tulane Athletics

SPORTSAUGUST 27, 201516

Playing with T-shirts over pads with no chance of home field advantage, Tulane foot-ball somehow survived the nightmare season.

Despite being uprooted without much warning and having little to no contact with their families, the football team under Coach Chris Scelfo aimed to remain optimistic in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

With little warning of the effect Katrina would have, the Tulane athletic administra-tors were forced to scramble to secure evacu-ation routes for the football and soccer teams to Jackson State University in Jackson, Missis-sippi.

The equipment staff packed for the upcom-ing week, prepared to travel to Hattiesburg for the opening football game, which they soon learned was not plausible.

Despite not knowing the status of Tulane or New Orleans, the football team continued to practice. With 124 student-athletes stuck in a gym with no food, air conditioning or contact

to the outside world, Tulane Athletic Director Rick Dickson had a lot to handle.

“We didn’t have anything in place for a long-term evacuation,” Dickson said. “Our initial plan was to stay in the city of Houston but within 48 hours of making those plans maybe a million people migrated to Houston so any housing options that we had evaporat-ed over night.”

The football team was forced to play out their entire season on the road playing 11 games in 11 stadiums in 11 weeks, yet the Tu-lane and New Orleans community remained united.

“Though they were few in numbers and drenched by the rains, the Tulane fans stood there proud, supportive and committed,” Scelfo said in his book “Fourth and New Or-leans.”

On Sept. 9, 2005 the Green Wave football team settled into its new dorms at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, Louisiana. They learned to live day-by-day growing together more than ever envisioned.

The Green Wave finished its 2005 season with a 2-9 record, but it remains a season re-membered by all. Tulane Athletics was kept

afloat by its desire to continue the season and not give up.

“Losing sucks, definitely,” Former Captain Preston Brown said. “But in my mind, we’re always going to be champions for just endur-ing that season. Forget the record.”

Tulane’s first win of the season against Southern Methodist University not only re-vamped the team but also gave it a little hope in the bleakest time for the city it now called home. The win gave the team something pos-itive out of their situation.

The positive outcomes of that season were not just influential in the moment but still hold importance today.

“We have a piece of what we are today be-cause of [the Katrina athletes] and we wouldn’t have what we have now if it weren’t for them,” Dickson said. “Because of how they faced ad-versity we are in a different place today.”

At the end of the 2005 season, with a far from perfect record and the reality of New Or-leans’ devastation beginning to sink in, Coach Scelfo was determined to keep spirits up and to remind his players that what they went through was not easy but made them more of a team.

11 StadiumsWeeks

One Team: Tulane football overcomes disastrous season after Katrina

by jordan figueredo print sports editor

will potts | photo editor