USA Today: Return of students brings dose of life to New Orleans

I went to the Welcome back/Dr. King Day concert last night at Tulane's uptown campus. It was amazing and inspiring, the best MLK Day event I've ever attended. First were speeches from Tulane President Cowen, Louisiana governor Blanco, and Lt. Gov. Landrieu. They were the expected, "glad you're back, let's work together to rebuild a greater New Orleans" type speeches. But then Jazz legend Wynton Marsalis gave what was probably the best speech I've ever heard live. He was motivating, funny, eloquent, and he tied together the need to rebuild New Orleans with following Dr. King's legacy and ideals very well. The text of this speech is posted in my previous entry (below this one) on my blog. Following this great speech was a short jazz set featuring Wynton Marsalis on trumpet, his father Ellis Marsalis on piano, drummer Herlin Riley and bassist Reginald Veal. Their talent was undescribable, and the soulful music made me feel good to be back in New Orleans. What a night!

You may be able to hear part of it on NPR since they were there recording. See the USA Today/AP article below.
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Return of students brings dose of life to New Orleans


Jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis performs at Tulane University.
Ben Margot, AP






Posted 1/16/2006 11:28 PM


NEW ORLEANS (AP) — With their energy, optimism and free-spending ways, college students could be just what this struggling city needs right now.

New Orleans is reopening for business as a college town, though on a reduced scale. Classes at Tulane, Xavier and Southern universities start on Tuesday. Loyola and Dillard started last week.

Jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis celebrated the students' return in a packed concert Monday hosted by Tulane, asking students to honor the memory of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. by helping rebuild the city.

"What better way to celebrate him than by rising to a challenge," he said on the holiday honoring King, before playing a set with his father, Ellis, a pianist.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco asked the students to commit their summers to helping rebuild the state.

"Your state needs you," she said. "We need your minds, your good ideas, your contagious energy, your spirit, to rebuild."

At colleges around the city, many classes will be held in trailers and hotel conference rooms while campus repairs continue, and overall enrollment is considerably lower than it was before Hurricane Katrina.

Still, more students came back than initially feared — including 88% at Tulane. While no one believes college students can single-handedly revive New Orleans, few can imagine how the city could ever come back without them.

"I feel like just by being here, we're giving a hand to the city," said Alicia Figueroa, a Loyola University junior from Miami, stepping off a Loyola bus tour Saturday of the city neighborhoods hardest hit by the flood. "Even just going to the Winn-Dixie and buying groceries, that puts money into the city."

An estimated 65,000 students attended New Orleans colleges before the storm, and about 40,000 lived in the city, according to the 2000 census. Because the overall population will probably return more slowly than the students, New Orleans will be even more of a college town than before.

Not only is Tulane the city's largest employer, but the return of its students will boost New Orleans' population 20%, President Scott Cowen said.

In the short run, businesses from bars to bookstores should see a much-needed revenue boost. In the long run, the city hopes they will stay after graduation as a skilled workforce.

"It's hard to imagine a major city growing and thriving without having universities," said Tim Ryan, an economist and chancellor of the University of New Orleans. "They will really give a breath of new life to the city."

For now, though, it takes a leap of faith to imagine a thriving college life on several of the campuses.

The neighborhood around Tulane and Loyola is relatively vibrant, but Xavier, the country's only historically black and Roman Catholic college, is in an area of mostly abandoned homes and stores. Dillard, near the London Avenue Canal breach, was so badly damaged that it will not reopen there until at least next fall. Even then, it will almost certainly be an island of life in a sea of empty neighborhoods.

The school presses ahead, insisting that, somehow, a vibrant neighborhood will grow up again around the campus.

"There is a wonderful thing that happens around a campus, and it is almost inexplicable," said Brown University President Ruth Simmons, a Dillard alumna who has been working closely with the school since the storm. "It is very hard to find a campus that is not surrounded by a viable community."

There is some worry that, despite all the talk of a new ethos of public service, students living in the better-off neighborhoods will retreat to their own bubbles.

"They come back and expect it to be, 'Uptown New Orleans, let's have some fun,'" said Kevin Caldwell, busily serving drinks Saturday to dozens of football-watching Tulane students Saturday afternoon at a bar near campus. "That ain't what Uptown New Orleans is about any more. Uptown New Orleans is about rebuilding a city."

Caldwell said he was pleased to learn Loyola was taking students on bus tours of the most heavily damaged parts of the city.

"They're welcome back, but they'll have to be tolerant, because we've been here 4{ months" struggling to rebuild the city, he said. "They have to remember that."


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Copyright 2006 The Associated Press.

Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2006-01-16-katrina-students_x.htm