When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and students were forced to evacuate, some of them decided to weather the storm’s aftermath in D.C. Like many colleges around the country, GW opened its doors to students displaced from the hurricane, accepting about 40 of them as non-degree-seeking students. Most of these students came from Tulane University, with others arriving from the University of New Orleans, Dillard University and Xavier University. After spending a semester at GW, these five Tulane University students are heading back to the Big Easy with stories of what it was like to be a refugee in D.C.
Will Dokurno, sophomore
When Tulane University sophomore Will Dokurno got on a train from his home in Madison, Conn., to Washington, D.C., he didn’t expect to spend two and half weeks at GW without a permanent place to live.
On Sept. 3, three days after Hurricane Katrina ripped through New Orleans, Dokurno received an e-mail from a high school friend in D.C. saying that GW planned to accept displaced students for the fall semester. So he decided to take his chances in the nation’s capital.
Dokurno spent his first week at GW crashing in his friend’s room in Francis Scott Key Hall. He was signed into the dorm at night, but remained locked out all day while his friend was in class.
Dokurno said he tried to move into to his friend’s place in FSK, but GW wouldn’t let him. Like so many other New Orleans residents, Dokurno was left virtually homeless in the aftermath of one of the country’s most devastating natural disasters.
“They said because I wasn’t a degree-seeking student it was pretty much illegal for me to live there,” Dokurno said. “I couldn’t get (into FSK) in the afternoon so I had to sleep on park benches and stuff.”
After a week sleeping on a cot in FSK, Dokurno decided to find temporary housing in a hostel near Dupont Circle. He spent the next week and a half living at the International Student House, trekking to campus every day on foot.
“It was lot like a college dorm except I was rooming with a 30-year-old man from Argentina,” he said.
By mid-September, Dokurno finally got a break when he attended the University’s Colonial Inauguration for Gulf Coast students spending the semester at GW. Dokurno met Dean of Students Linda Donnels, who was moved by his story.
“I felt that the circumstances that he was in were not conducive to being a student,” Donnels said. Two days later, he moved into a double in Munson Hall.
“Generally, we don’t house non-degree-seeking students, but many schools made an exception for students who were displaced (by Hurricane Katrina),” Donnels said.
Despite the two and a half weeks he spent without housing, Dokurno said he was fortunate to have somewhere to go after the hurricane struck, unlike many New Orleans residents.
“I feel like I’m not even Southern. I’m just some Yankee who went down to New Orleans for a year,” he said about his freshman year at Tulane. “I definitely sympathize with (the residents of New Orleans), but I know my experience doesn’t compare. I’ve only lived there for a year, and those people have lived there for generations.”
Dokurno said he plans to finish out his sophomore year at Tulane when it reopens for classes next semester. He said he’s excited to get back to his friends in the Bayou.
“It’s been very lonely,” Dokurno said about his semester at GW. “There’s been a lot of personal reflection time – just me in a big empty dorm room, sitting, thinking about things.”
-Leah Carliner
Brian Krevor, senior
Brian Krevor never expected to spend his last year of college anywhere but New Orleans. But this Tulane University senior has made the most of his semester at GW.
With an internship on Capitol Hill and an array of new friends, Krevor, who hails from Rockville, Md., said he’s had a great time getting to know a new a city in spite of the devastation that rocked New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
“My parents made me stay in the area, and I chose GW over other schools because it’s in D.C.,” Krevor said. “It’s been a completely new experience. I never lived in a city.”
Krevor spent a month making the hour-long commute from Rockville to D.C. for classes before he found housing on campus. In October he moved into a four-person apartment in the Dakota, which he said completely changed his impression of GW.
“When I was commuting I was completely miserable,” Krevor said. “I didn’t know anyone and I didn’t want to be here.”
“I got very lucky with my roommates, they’re awesome,” he said of his three sophomore roommates, who are fraternity members in Sigma Alpha Epsilon. “They’ve been so great to me, taking me out, introducing me to all their friends, who are now my friends.”
But Krevor, who’s impressed with the University’s GWorld card system and “amazing” dorms, said as much as he likes GW, he can’t imagine going to school anywhere but New Orleans.
“There’s no comparison between the two cities,” he said. “You can’t describe New Orleans unless you’ve been there. It’s an unbelievable mix of cultures.”
Krevor added that he thinks the New Orleans nightlife beats out the D.C. bar scene.
“I didn’t know what last call was until I got here. In New Orleans, bars close at 6 a.m. for an hour to clean and then they open back up.”
Krevor hasn’t been to New Orleans since the hurricane struck, but he said he’s anxious to get back to Tulane next semester and help out with cleanup efforts. With his fellow Delta Tau Delta fraternity members, Krevor will help build homes throughout the city with Habitat for Humanity.
“A lot of people have said that New Orleans won’t be the same, but I think that’s selfish,” he said. “They use the city for its parties, but they’re not willing to help out when the city needs them the most.”
Krevor said he plans on savoring his last few months as a Tulane student, but will never regret his time spent at GW.
“It’s just something that happens,” Krevor said. “I feel like (this experience) is something that makes you stronger.”
-Marissa Levy
Amy Plavner, freshman
At 8 a.m. on the morning of Aug. 27, freshman Amy Plavner began to move her things into her dorm room at Tulane University. Four hours later, at noon, she was ordered to evacuate.
“They said that everyone had to be off campus by 6 p.m. That was on Saturday and (the resident assistants) said that we’d definitely be back by Thursday,” Plavner recalled.
She has not been back to Tulane since.
When it became clear that the seemingly routine evacuation in anticipation of Hurricane Katrina would last quite a bit longer than expected, Plavner decided to spend her first semester of college at her second-choice school, GW.
“My grandparents had gone here, my parents had gone here. The only thing that had turned me off about GW was that it was so close to home,” she said. After having grown up in Annapolis, Md., Plavner is aching to experience life in a city other than Washington, D.C.
“I actually would have gone to California if my parents had let me,” Plavner said. “I like the idea of being a time zone away.”
Plavner’s unconventional freshman experience began with an orientation created just for students who arrived after Hurricane Katrina. Lucky enough to have found space in a dorm, she moved into Thurston Hall just two weeks after regular move-in day.
“I experienced the freshman experience with everybody else,” Plavner said. She has also done something that there just wasn’t time to do before leaving Tulane so suddenly: she has found friends. Plavner admits that it will be hard to leave them behind when she returns to New Orleans next semester.
Still, she can’t wait to be an incoming freshman all over again.
“It’s almost been like a semester abroad,” Plavner said. “I really don’t feel like I’ve been in college yet.”
-Nicole Wetherell
Laura Gaige, senior
“It wasn’t really a big scary thing,” senior Laura Gaige said of Tulane University’s mandatory evacuation just days before the start of fall semester.
Evacuations were an excuse to spend a couple of days in another city with a bunch of her friends. She had done it before. She didn’t expect this evacuation to be very different.
Then Hurricane Katrina hit.
In October, Gaige returned to find that her house had been under 5 to 6 feet of water. Her belongings were unsalvageable.
In October, Gaige returned to find that her house had been under five to six feet of water. Her belongings were unsalvageable.
With the university that she had attended for the previous three years shut down, the Ohio native moved in with an aunt in Washington, D.C., and signed up to spend her senior year fall semester at GW.
Gaige said that professors at GW were “very generous and helpful” in letting her join their classes after the start of the semester. Still, she has found it difficult to deal with the changes that switching schools in her senior year has brought.
“It’s really overwhelming and it’s still causing a lot of problems in my life,” said Gaige, who says that it’s been difficult applying to medical schools amid the hurricane’s aftermath. Being away from her friends for so long has added to the difficulty.
“I studied abroad all of last year too. I haven’t seen my friends in a year and a half,” she said.
Still, Gaige says that in losing so much of what she owned she has learned a lot, and she continues to grow as a result.
“It’s kind of hard to look in retrospect at what I’ve learned from it when I’m still learning from it,” she said.
Gaige will be starting her final semester of classes at Tulane University on Jan. 16, and will be moving back into the same house after the first floor is gutted and renovated. She looks forward to her friends returning to campus as well.
“I’m really looking forward to seeing everybody again,” Gaige said. “It’ll be a good time, I’m sure.”
-Nicole Wetherell
Lauren Ulf, Junior
Tulane junior Lauren Ulf, who spent the last three months taking classes at GW, can’t wait to get back to New Orleans.
Ulf, who commuted to D.C. twice a week from her home in Bethesda, Md., said she enjoyed taking classes at GW, but wasn’t interested in the campus social life.
“I have just a general sense of apathy. It was hard because (transferring to GW) was not something I chose,” Ulf said. “For me it is more of a transition period. I feel like my life is on pause, and I just didn’t want to invest too much of myself into it besides for academics.”
Ulf said she enjoyed her GW classes in English and anthropology, but never got a feel for the campus in the heart of Washington, D.C.
“I’m not a huge fan of the city campus,” she said. “Tulane is in the city, but it is a separate entity. (GW) is hard to get used to.”
Ulf spent four days in New Orleans before the category four Hurricane Katrina forced her to evacuate the city. She spent a week at her roommate’s house in Georgia, surveying the devastation of the storm. When Tulane announced it would be closed for the semester, Ulf finally went home to Bethesda.
Ulf spent most of her time working for her aunt in D.C. and hanging out with old high school friends. In retrospect, she said she wishes she spent the semester at a school farther from home.
“I sometimes wish I had gone somewhere to get a more abroad feel,” she said. “I wish I hadn’t felt the need to just stay on track and I had done something different.”
Although she hasn’t returned to New Orleans since the hurricane hit, Ulf said she’s excited to go back to Tulane in January and do her part to help clean up the city. Unlike so many residents left homeless, Ulf will return to an off-campus apartment that was spared the devastation of floodwaters.
“I know my stuff’s okay,” she said. “We were lucky that there was no flooding or looting where our apartment is, but I have no idea what to expect from the city.”
“I would like to get down there where I can help out, but it is hard going back to your home when it’s not your home as you remembered it,” she added. “I know (Tulane) will try to create a sense of normalcy.”
Ulf said she knows of some Tulane students who won’t be returning to New Orleans next semester, but she couldn’t imagine staying away from her school.
“I am more gung-ho about Tulane than ever,” she said. “The spirit of the city is so strong, you can’t just move away and forget about it.”
-Liz Hall
