PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 25, No. 6, Sept. 15, 2005

UI community steps up to help Hurricane Katrina victims

By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor
217-244-1072; slforres@uiuc.edu

Click photo to enlarge Photo by Michael Morgan A drop in the bucket Marya Ryan, I-card program director in the Office of Business and Financial Services, accepts a donation from Kajal Vashi, a senior in political science, in front of Henry Administration Building. Volunteers collected nearly $33,000 on behalf of the American Red Cross at several locations around campus and at Memorial Stadium during the Sept. 3 and Sept. 10 football games.

The UI is allowing students from Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, states affected by Hurricane Katrina, to attend any of its three institutions for up to a year as non-degree students. More than 150 students have been enrolled at the three UI campuses thus far, including 47 undergraduates and several graduate students in law and business at the Urbana campus. Chancellor Richard Herman said that the campus will accommodate up to 60 displaced students.

The College of Medicine has agreed to accept up to 30 students; the College of Law will accommodate up to 10 displaced second-year and third-year law students from Tulane University and Loyola University New Orleans law schools for the fall semester.

Urbana’s Guided Individual Study program, which would allow students to study one-on-one with faculty members, is being offered to displaced students as well.

Ray Schroeder, director of the UIS Office of Technology-Enhanced Learning, and UI Online Director Burks Oakley are leading a national drive to offer tuition-free, accelerated online courses to displaced students. As of Sept. 8, 37 students had enrolled in the online program, which will begin Oct. 10 and may offer courses to as many as 10,000 displaced students. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation agreed to fund the program with a $1.1 million grant.

Although fall-semester classes were well under way by the time Hurricane Katrina struck on Aug. 29, faculty members in the College of Law offered to teach additional classes and to increase class sizes to accommodate students from colleges devastated by the storm.

The Student Bar Association, the Black Law Students Association and the Women’s Law Society at Urbana collected clothing, food, toiletries and other items to send to Gulf Coast evacuees being housed in the Houston Astrodome. The College of Law also founded the Hurricane Katrina Emergency Law Student Fund and encouraged alumni and friends to make donations.

Click photo to enlarge Photo by Kwame Ross Reaching out Scott Rochelle, a second-year law student, adds his donation to the pile of clothing, food and other items in the lobby of the Law Building collected by the Black Law Students Association for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

“Our faculty, students and staff have done a wonderful job of pulling together to assist these displaced students as quickly as possible so they can resume the task of pursuing a law degree and returning to some sense of normalcy in their lives,” said College of Law Dean Heidi Hurd.

Volunteers on the Urbana campus raised more than $18,000 on behalf of the American Red Cross at the Sept. 3 UI-Rutgers football game at Memorial Stadium. Additional collection efforts by volunteers around campus on Sept. 8 and Sept. 9 and at the Sept. 10 Illinois-San Jose State game brought in about $15,000 more, for a total of nearly $33,000.

Urbana faculty and staff members, including civil and environmental engineers, experts in urban and regional planning, campus police officers and a staff member in the News Bureau, have volunteered their services to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other organizations deployed to the Gulf Coast region.

Faculty members in the Afro-American Studies and Research Program organized a public forum about issues surrounding the hurricane and hurricane victims that drew approximately 300 people to Smith Memorial Hall on Sept. 6.

Fanon Che Wilkins, a professor of history and one of the forum’s organizers, said: “We wanted to have a town hall meeting where people could come get things off their chest, see what some faculty are doing, find alternative sources of information and get involved. This is a tremendous opportunity to galvanize and mobilize new kinds of social movement activity that will significantly raise the standards of what we need and want in this society and the world. As long as we think about these things in isolation, we will forever be spinning our wheels.”

Wilkins said the forum’s organizers will develop an action plan to give to Illinois Legislators that would broaden the scope of federal relief beyond survivors’ immediate needs and help with long-term recovery.

Faculty members and students in the English department are organizing volunteer committees to explore several issues, including volunteer subsidies, scholarships for high school and college students, teaching events and an undergraduate conference on topics related to the hurricane and its aftermath.

More on Hurricane Katrina:

Web site provides forum for discussion of Katrina aftemath, how to help
A UI professor, who formerly taught at Tulane University in New Orleans, has set up a public online forum to address the disaster. Full story

Experts should be thinking -- now -- beyond Katrina rescue effort
While post-Katrina rescue and evacuation operations continue to be the priority in New Orleans, urban planning expert Rob Olshansky says now also is the time to be staging the next phase of the city’s disaster-recovery plans. Full story

Back to Index