Bravo, Ellen.  Those are wonderful and humane suggestions. 

Ellen,

I agree with you. As a counterpoint to the USM announcement, here is Dartmouth's response to the crisis, a very admirable and compassionate one. (I taught at Dartmouth last fall and still receive their official mailings, which is why I have this.) They are granting leave time to faculty and staff who want to go south to help. I sure hope that USM can do the same for those who have homes and lives in ruins.

Greg O.

>To the Dartmouth community:

In response to the needs of college students whose lives have been disrupted by
Hurricane Katrina, I have today approved a plan to offer temporary admission to
academically qualified undergraduates from the colleges and universities whose
operations have been affected.

Because we are still three weeks away from the opening of our fall term on
September 21, we hope this will be of particular help to students who need time
to assess their options and take action but hope to continue their studies this
fall.

The students will be admitted under a temporary expansion of our Special
Community Student Program, and we will not impose a limit on the number. We will
review the program on a term-by-term basis, and will expect students to return
to their home institutions once that is possible.

We will waive the tuition for these students, but they will be admitted with the
provision that they pay the regular tuition at their home institutions. We
envision that the home institutions will use the tuition funds to help
rehabilitate their campuses and to help offset some of the impact on their local
employees.

We are not in a position to offer housing on campus, but we will reach out to
the community to organize a volunteer effort to help any students admitted under
this program to find housing within a reasonable distance of the College.

There are many details of this arrangement yet to be worked out, but I am
confident that we will soon be prepared to accept visiting students, and I look
forward to welcoming them. We will work with affected institutions, higher
education associations, the media, and members of the Dartmouth family to get
this information out as widely and quickly as possible. Inquiries about these
arrangements may be directed to Julie Bell, Coordinator of Dartmouth's Special
Community Student Program at (603) 646-3098 or via email at
Julie.Bell@Dartmouth.Edu.

Paul Danos, Dean of Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business, has also announced that
Tuck will arrange for a limited number of special exchange students to be
admitted to the second year of the MBA program. Arrangements for students in
Dartmouth's other graduate and professional programs are under consideration.

While we are putting the special admissions program in place, I have asked a
range of Dartmouth administrators to find ways we may be able to convey material
aid and assistance directly from Dartmouth to the affected areas. We will
explore options to grant leave time to faculty and staff members who wish to
join with various agencies to assist in hurricane relief efforts in the affected
areas. Student interest in participating in relief programs is being
coordinated by the Tucker Foundation. I expect more information on these
programs to be available next week.

Meanwhile, I encourage members of the Dartmouth community to participate in
relief efforts already under way. You can find an online list of links to the
web pages of organizations conducting such efforts on the Dartmouth web page
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~news/features/katrina/.

We are also working to help Dartmouth students, faculty, staff and alumni who
have been directly or indirectly affected by the hurricane and its aftermath:

* Members of our community who may feel a need for counseling can find, on the
web page mentioned above, information about campus offices that offer such
services.

* We have a number of current undergraduates and members of the incoming Class
of 2009 who are from the affected areas, and we are working to make sure they
know that we can help them with a variety of needs they may have when they
arrive back in Hanover for the fall term.

* For alumni and others looking to provide or get information about members of
the Dartmouth family who may have been in harm's way, we have established a
special "blog" (weblog) at http://dartmouthkatrina.blogspot.com/.

More information on all these efforts will be available in the near future, and
we will update our web page on Dartmouth responses to Hurricane Katrina
accordingly. Please check that website regularly for additional information.


James Wright
President

It is truly wonderful what Dartmouth and many other institutions are doing to help affected students and faculty. Thanks, Greg, for sharing this with us.

As for opening campus to the community at this stage, I agree it would be desirable, but may not be advisable. I am sure that physical plant is devoting their time to building repair and grounds cleanup. The Commons has been serving the campus community that are still living on campus is my understanding. We should also remember that school was already in session when this hell on earth broke loose so the dorm rooms are most likely occupied with student belongings for the most part, and it would be injudicious to put strangers in those rooms. Finally, offering services requires staffing. We should keep in mind that security staff, food service staff and dorm staff are likely to be suffering from effects of the hurricane as well. It would, in my mind, be inappropriate to ask these people to return to campus on a daily basis in order to take care of other people rather than attending to what I am sure are some deep personal crises.

I'm not arguing for or against reopening on the 12th. I certainly agree with Ellen that many faculty and students may or may not be in a condition to return on that date. I'm hoping that middle-administration, by which I mean deans and department chairs, will use common sense and decency in dealing with stressed faculty over the first weeks following reopening. I'm pretty confident up to the chair level that that is likely. I'm sure that faculty will have to make adjustments in deadlines, etc, to accommodate students who may be unable to return on the 12th, or may have lost textbooks, computers, etc. that will make assignments more difficult.

I'll leave it to better minds than mine as to the ethical points of the decision. What I can say is that none of the options are particularly appealing. Not reopening for a month doesn't send a very good message. Reopening too soon can create a lot of problems as well.

As for it being the soundest financial decision, I agree. But, I don't think that is a particularly bad or unethical aspect of the decision. Let's remember that USM is a huge economic engine for Hattiesburg and the entire Pine Belt. Those who work at the University can ill-afford for poor financial decisions to be made that could result in layoffs, etc. There is a tendency to look at "the University" as "them." But, if we believe what we say we believe about the academy, the university is 'us,' too...at least for those who belong to the USM family. The financial reality is that the university endowment is virtually non-existent from a cash point of view. Tulane has no option but to cancel its fall term. Maybe they are better off than USM and can afford to continue payroll checks until January or whenever they are able to reopen their doors. I don't think that's a real possibility at USM, so reopening may keep people employed and receiving their salaries, paltry as some of those are (particularly for staff). The option is uemployment insurance which maxes at something around $200-$250 per week even for the highest paid employee.

Undoubtedly this will make some posters angry. That's not my intent. I'm simply trying to point out that decisions like this are complex. They affect many many MANY people. What may on the surface seem self-serving may also be better community service than we realize, even if unintentionally.

I do think the tone of press releases and announcements could be softened and much more sensitive to the situations of the affected students, staff, faculty and townspeople.

Apparently those tuition dollars are pretty important after all. I believe Myron Henry has made the point repeatedly.

I am going to be sure that my home has electricity before I come back to Hattiesburg.  So far from what I can tell some of the "higher rent areas" to the west have power back on again, but apparently there are appartment complexes that do not yet have power.

Then there is the question of gas, plane or train or a combination of both to get back.

Question: if one's home is not damaged and it turns out that the the power is not back on by 9/12 what are we supposed to do?

Barton Spencer wrote:

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It will be a miracle if power is restored to my neighborhood, around Thames Elementary, by September 12. A very large number of the poles are down and there is debris everywhere.
On a positive note: There is a group of linemen that have literally camped out at Thames Elementary (the tents are near the walking track) and I suppose they are working within the neighborhood, but I don't know for sure. They are from out of state, and it's great to see them here.

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They are from a tree removal company,not an electric utility

Webmaster:

I note that you have been sternly vigilant on other threads. Several hours ago, I posted a response to the more outrageous insinuations of "In Hattiesburg Now" above, which never appeared. Before I try to reconstruct my response, I would like to know whether you killed the previous one.

Banker makes a good point. Since no good deed goes unpunished, and likely no good point of view, either, Banker can probably expect an onslaught.

Still, s/he is right. Everyone in the area there is suffering. Yet, it is expected that MS Power employees report to work to get power back to others' homes, that gas station attendants and owners show up to be sure gas can be purchased, volunteers and staff at Red Cross, Salvation Army and other agencies all have house damage, but are making sure folks get fed. Police and Fire personnel, as well as most city employees, have been working near round-the-clock shifts to provide services and protect the public.

Hopefully profs whose homes are in worse shape can get one whose home is not as badly damaged to cover some classes for them or take whatever leave time is available. No doubt a lot of flexibility will be required from everyone.

Under normal circumstances, which these most certainly are not, I'd agree with you. As stretched as resources are now, you have to take contractors when you can get them. You may have to be there when MS Power comes through or they won't reconnect you. There are multiple reasons that a class may have to be covered.

I don't think anyone is advocating that the world should be perfect before USM reopens. I think a lot of people, including me, are concerned about safety issues, particularly for students. There are a lot of part-time students who come to night classes. You can't be out with the curfew, so what do those folks do?

There are more questions than answers, Talonical, but the faculty I've talked to, and they are several if not many, are willing to do what it takes to normalize life at work and at home. Give them just a small break, for the sake of compassion, please.

Web Master wrote:

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Voter wrote: Webmaster: I note that you have been sternly vigilant on other threads. Several hours ago, I posted a response to the more outrageous insinuations of "In Hattiesburg Now" above, which never appeared. Before I try to reconstruct my response, I would like to know whether you killed the previous one. I think your response must have gotten lost. I didn't delete it, to my knowledge. WM

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Voter, I believe that was the thread where I first asked for the Webmaster's assistance and soon after the thread was eliminated and the other warning(s) were posted.  It was outrageous and, I believe, designed to create divisiveness and anti-faculty sentiment.