Following the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, displaced New Orleanians — including several hundred university students — fled to Baton Rouge, which fared better from the storm.
The shadow of the Category 3 hurricane’s impact still looms large in Louisiana — in policy, infrastructure and even in higher education.
In the aftermath, Baton Rouge universities, like Louisiana State University, opened their campuses to those in need.
The LSU community provided food, crammed beds into dorms and turned their basketball arena into the largest acute-care hospital in U.S. history.
“ LSU became kind of a magnet because of the fact that we had some [semblance] of organization there, as well as the power and the energy to actually do some of the things that were necessary in order to treat people,” Sean O’Keefe, then-chancellor of LSU said. “House 'em, shelter folks, help 'em get on their way to the next stop, wherever they were going, and all that.”
A few days into what should have been the new school year, LSU had become a disaster recovery center, ready to serve displaced New Orleanians. And the displaced just kept coming — tens of thousands of people arrived on campus looking for stability.
“And it was not just a few, it was several thousand people who ended up moving through the campus,” O’Keefe said. “.It was… a sea of humanity that seemed inexhaustible.”
While not a perfect response, LSU’s recovery effort went so well that it continues to inform the way the university handles public safety.
“ Katrina has sparked what we call the whole community approach that's looking at every hazard, every vulnerability,” Michael Antoine said. We now take this holistic approach in terms of campus safety and everything we do.”
Antoine served as a firefighter during Katrina and is now in charge of campus safety and emergency preparedness at LSU. He said an unexpected precedent that LSU’s Katrina response set was a lasting community partnership in times of crisis.
“One of the things that I could say that Katrina has changed the most is the collaboration,” Antoine said. “Whether it is government, private partnerships, nonprofit, faith-based communities… you see the coordination during a crisis, and I think Katrina was one of the events that gave us an eye-opening and showed us that we're stronger together.”
Katrina’s impact on Baton Rouge isn’t limited to public safety policy. Albert Samuels, the chair of the department of political science and geography at Southern University, said he believes former Gov. Bobby Jindal wouldn’t have been elected if not for Katrina. He sees his policies as a direct consequence of the storm.
“He insisted on not raising taxes, to a fault, even when Republicans were offering proposals to raise taxes,” Samuels said. “Louisiana has not recovered. Higher education still has not recovered from all the general cuts.”
Having to deal with the fiscal realities of post-Katrina without raising taxes meant budgets had to be cut. He said higher education was an easy place to start.
“Southern University, like other institutions, used to receive 70% of their overall budget from state appropriations,” Samuels said. “The other 30% was tuition and the [rest] — self-generated fees. Then that proportion has completely reversed.”
With such a drastic shift in budget responsibility to the university, money had to be found elsewhere. Samuels said that, usually, students pick up the tab.
“In Louisiana, you can't raise tuition, but you can raise fees,” he said. “You can raise tuition only by like 5%. So I've shown some of my students what the fee bill was in 2008 versus what they're paying now. And when they see their number, they're just outraged.”
