Katrina Journal: Notes from the Frontlines of a Novice History Chair

When I drive to work from the interstate I-610, by the eerily empty St. Bernard Public Housing Project, I drive by two miles of blighted houses on my way to the Lakefront campus of the University of New Orleans. Crews clean up the debris of eviscerated houses emptied to the side of the streets. Piles of mold-covered sheetrock, electronic equipment, books, and furniture are telltale signs of happier days in the “Crescent City.”

We reported back to work on the UNO campus on January 3. Our colleagues from the Liberal Arts faculty and administration had spilled over into our building (Education) since their building had not been cleared yet by the industrial hygienists (known on campus as the “mold Nazis”). The flood-and-looting-displaced post office, book store, and facilities crews also worked out of the Education building. Everything was transitory as crews cleared and refurbished the campus for the beginning of the semester on January 30. UNO had suffered 100 million dollars worth of damages as a result of flooding and looting from some 2,000 refugees that were dropped onto campus after “Katrina” by Coast Guard helicopters.

UNO’s comeback was remarkable – our administration showed creativity under enormous duress. Six weeks after Katrina the fall semester resumed with on-line courses and regular lecture classes on satellite campuses in New Orleans suburbs. Many colleagues had to learn the technology “on the run.” 8,000 students re-registered, some displaced students taking online courses from all over the U.S. and as far away as Innsbruck, Austria. Intense two-week “intersessions” were offered on the Lakefront campus in December and January to make up lost terrain. On January 20, UNO held its regular fall graduation in the downtown Hilton Hotel in a crowded grand ballroom; the graduations are usually staged in December in the UNO arena, which was unusable due to “Katrina” related destruction. Almost 800 students graduated (80 percent of the seniors scheduled to graduate this fall managed to get the credits needed for graduation as a result of the resumed fall term). Chancellor Tim Ryan got an extended standing ovation, when Provost Rick Barton related the story of how Ryan had personally salvaged the UNO servers in a “commando-type action” a few days after “Katrina,” entering the campus from the Lake Pontchartrain side like a pirate by boat with the help of the U.S. Coast Guard (living up to the image of the UNO “privateer” mascot). Ryan brought the servers to Baton Rouge to relaunch the semester by establishing first contacts with faculty and students.

Given the retirement of senior faculty, the UNO History Department had advertised the search for a new chair for the fall of 2005. After “Katrina” there was an immediate and predictable freeze for hiring and travel. For lack of alternatives I took over as chair at the beginning of 2006. The usual business of learning the ropes was quickly overtaken by a dramatic housing crisis among hundreds of UNO faculty and staff, as well as students. FEMA had promised to have trailers ready for some 400 students and almost that many faculty and staff. Ten days before the beginning of the semester FEMA informed the chancellor’s office that the student trailers would not be ready before the end of February and faculty trailers not before the end of March. Post-Michael-Brown-FEMA declined to put the displaced UNO people into hotels for temporary housing, as they are struggling to end the hotel programs before the Mardi Gras onrush of visitors. The student trailers, however, had already been placed on parking lots and on big grassy sporting grounds around campus, only waiting to be hooked up to electricity and sewerage. There they stand now, in neat white rows like an army marching into the field, a monument to FEMA’s and the Bush administration’s incompetence to deliver their promises to the storm-ravaged city and its people and institutions. It will be easy to incorporate the lessons of governmental and bureaucratic inefficiencies into our U.S. History surveys this semester.

What does this mean for the UNO History Department? 5 out of 13 faculty members – their families still spread across the “fruited plane” from Houston to Opelousas to Mobile -- had lost or seen their houses/apartments damaged, needed to find temporary housing to teach their classes beginning of last week. Some found hotels, others sleep on couches with colleagues, one will go into the FEMA trailer of a grad student, and one Jamaican grad student lives with my parents-in-law 60 miles outside of New Orleans, commuting into the city. The secretary of the department still is with her mother in Greenville, MS, not finding an abode in the intact parts of the city charging double pre-Katrina rents (a tell-tale sign of the beauty of the “market place taking care of itself”, lauded every day by the President and his “Gulf Coast recovery czar” Donald Powell – unfortunately not Colin).

You would expect us all to be depressed and in despair down here in the lower bowels of the U.S. of A. Yes, there are daily inklings of that too. But in fact we are working harder than ever. The most amazing revelation for me was colleagues and grad students, drawing together, as pulled by magic strings, eager to help, volunteering daily to take on new assignments in a shrinking department. A previously tight department has come together even closer. There is no back-biting or grousing. My friends from grad school, who already had experience as chairs, had warned me about the endless parades of colleagues showing up in their offices to have their vast egos stroked, special deals delivered, complaints met instantly. None of that. It is as if the vast human “Katrina” disaster has wonderfully cleared the air, where everybody in the department is happy about still having a job and discovering that basic collegiality and human solidarity is much more valuable now than careerism.

More than that, good things happen that uplifts our spirits. The AHA office in Washington, D.C., informed us that this year’s books left behind at the annual convention by publishers will be donated to the UNO History Department. 13 boxes of books recently arrived. Grateful colleagues who have lost their personal libraries in the “Katrina” floods will get the first go at it to begin rebuilding their personal libraries. The UNO Library, where the history section is currently inaccessible due to mold problems, will get the bulk of it. To know that our plight is not forgotten in the profession is encouraging. Such generosity puts a smile on our faces. Right before “Katrina” struck, distinguished military historian Allan Millett, recently retired from Ohio State University, received his contract as the new director of the Eisenhower Center. Nobody would have blamed him for throwing in the towel after “Katrina” and looking for greener pastures. He stuck by his commitment and started teaching two courses in military history last week (as much as the previous director had taught in five years). His august presence will be crucial in fortifying our grad students and in the longer-term rebuilding of the department. Hail to a stout former U.S. marine.

Connie Atkinson, Andrew Goss, Michael Mizell-Nelson, talented younger colleagues in the department have seized the initiative after the storm and submitted exciting and creative grant proposals for a “Katrina digital memory bank” and comparative post-disaster floodworks in the Netherlands and New Orleans. Collecting, documenting and archiving “Katrina” and “Rita” and the recovery process will clearly be a prime focus of the department and its graduate program for years to come. In fact, if these grants will be funded, it opens opportunities to redefine the department’s mission and attract students interested in immersing themselves in the study of urban disaster recovery. In the 250th anniversary year of Mozart’s birthday, we will bring the “come-back” New Orleans message to Salzburg in Austria with a conference, concerts and a photo exhibit entitled “Satchmo Meets Amadeus.”

Meanwhile the semester has begun and it is exciting to see the students back. The bookstore may not have their course books ready, much reduced campus dining may be hard to find, the physical fitness center may still be shuttered, parking may be scarce, yet in spite of all these hardships they come to the Lakefront and are willing to work harder than ever. It is shocking and sad to hear their stories of flight before and recovery after “Katrina.” Our students mean much more to us these days. They are precious as they represent aspirations for the come back of the university.

When I drive home after evening lecture miles of roads around Lake Pontchartrain are unlit and pitch dark. The downtown highrises in the city seem like huge torches in the distance. Parts of one of the major American metropolitan centers look like a mysterious ghost town. Where are these fellow citizens? Will they return and start all over? How could it all happen?