Friend's News

I arrived in New Orleans on the morning of August 27th, 2005 after visiting my family for a few days in Las Vegas. I was beginning my fourth year of architecture school at Tulane University, looking forward to the new school year with my friends and my fellow NAVAL ROTC midshipmen. I was also really excited to swap summer stories. My summer had been a pretty good one, spent traveling through Europe with the school of architecture. The school program, the VPBB (Vienna, Prague, Basel, and Berlin) Central Europe Summer Travel Program, culminated in a month-long residency in New Orleans, working on an intensive urban design studio alongside 12 students from Vienna. It was a great time, both fun and instructive.

I had gone straight to school from the airport, and was in the process of moving into my new dorm around 11 a.m., when the phone rang; it was my Naval ROTC unit platoon commander. He informed me that our commanding officer had ordered a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans for all midshipmen in the unit, due to an impending hurricane. While this was serious, it wasn't uncommon. In the previous three years we had evacuated several times, always returning to school within four or five days and always returning to life in New Orleans pretty close to normal. There was little reason to believe that this hurricane named Katrina would be any different. Conferring with my friends Matt, Nate, and Mike, it didn't take long to decide on a plan of action: We would turn the evacuation into a road trip, an unusual way for us to start the school year but not an entirely unpleasant one.

The plan was to go to Memphis, to Matt's cousin's house, to wait out the storm, which was where we were on Sunday, watching with the rest of the world, when Katrina made landfall. While we shared the same helpless, numbed feelings much of the nation felt, our feelings were of a different sort; they were personal. New Orleans had been our home for the past three years.

It became clear very quickly that we weren't going home any time soon, because the news got worse by the hour. So we headed for Chicago, to my friend Steve's place. About to leave for his fourth year of school abroad, Steve welcomed us with open arms and the wireless Internet that allowed all of us to stay connected to friends and family. As the devastation continued down south, and the tragic toll from the storm grew, another date loomed for all of us: Thursday, September 1 - the first day of school. Privately, we each began to wonder: What do people do when their school is under water?

On Wednesday we traveled to Dayton, Ohio, to stay with Matt's family. On each stop of our increasingly bedraggled tour, I was touched by the unbelievable generosity and hospitality of our hosts. And, with each stop - particularly when watching the agonizing footage out of the Gulf - I felt extremely fortunate that my friends and I had safe places to go. Where we really needed to go, however, was to school. But where? And how?

By now, the reality of Tulane being out of commission for an extended period had sunk in. We had no choice but to hit the phones, and begin calling colleges.

For a long time, I had exactly zero luck. Every school I called required that I either be from the state or have a legitimate connection to the school, whatever that meant. I was just starting to get a little crazy when I heard from a friend of my father's that Cornell University was accepting Tulane students unconditionally, where they were from, whatever their major. After all this time this news seemed too good to be true. But I placed the call, and was immediately directed to the admissions office, where they told me that if I showed up by the following week, I could attend school. There was one catch - I couldn't register over the phone. I had to do it in person. So the next stop for me, Matt, and Nate was set: Ithaca, NY.

We arrived at Cornell early on Tuesday, and got in line at the offices of the School of Continuing Education. We had no idea what to expect. At this point, classes at Cornell had been in session for more than two weeks and as everyone who's ever been to college knows, the admissions process is, at best, daunting; at worst, a bureaucratic black hole. Arriving with such notice and in such unusual circumstances, our admissions certainly had all the makings of a disaster of a different sort.

But we couldn't have been more wrong. After filling out some obligatory paperwork we were split into groups of our various schools. With lightning speed we received student ID's and e-mail addresses and were introduced to the deans of our respective colleges. As it turned out, I was one of about 150 Tulane architecture students crashing Cornell's party.

Amazingly, and to our great relief, we never felt like outsiders. The reception we received was overwhelmingly generous, and made us feel like we had been at Cornell for years. In a brief ceremony, the chair of the Architecture Department, Professor Arthur Ovaska, welcomed us to the school. He appeared as shocked as all of us by the tragic and desperate situation in New Orleans, yet he was calm, decisive, and comforting. Mohsen Mostafavi, the Dean of the School of Architecture, Art, and Planning was also very reassuring, scoring big points with the anxious, stressed students and their parents.

Next, we met with the Cornell Naval ROTC Unit, who made us five arriving midshipmen feel very welcome, providing us with new uniforms, lockers and accommodating our Naval Science class requirements. We were treated as honored guests at the Cornell Naval Ball and received invitations to a plethora of social events with the upper-class midshipmen. It goes without saying that the Cornell NROTC is an exemplary unit.

The Tulane students meshed surprisingly well with the Cornell Architecture Department. Fortunately, the program is similar to our own; five-year masters programs with various internship requirements, as well as study-abroad opportunities in many parts of the world; the electives I took were comparable to Tulane electives. Though I hadn't taken a language class at Tulane, the word on 'the Hill' was that the Spanish class I took at Cornell was considerably more challenging and labor-intensive than those offered at Tulane. Lucky me.

Overall, the Cornell experience was amazing. It strengthened an already sturdy bond between Tulane and Cornell. Cornell openly accepted the arrival of every single Tulane student without hesitation, and treated us as their own. If it wasn't for my friends at Tulane - okay, and the Ithaca winters - nothing would deter me from staying at Cornell and finishing my degree. So, on behalf of everyone in the Tulane student body who attended Cornell in the fall semester of 2005. I would like to extend my gratitude for Cornell University's enormous service in extending kindness and lending assistance to the many dazed and confused Tulane University students in their time of need. Go Big Red!

Williston (Trey) Dye, III is a fifth year architecture student on a full Navy ROTC scholarship, at Tulane University. Born and Raised in Maryland, Trey plans to attend the Naval Flight School in Pensacola, and will, once his naval commitment is fulfilled, continue with a career in Architecture.