Responding to Hurricane Katrina
Lewis & Clark College is taking steps to provide assistance and respond to needs after Hurricane Katrina devasted the Gulf Coast Region.
September 1, 2005: President Tom Hochstettler announced that Lewis & Clark had joined together with a growing number of colleges and universities around the nation who have agreed to help displaced students continue their studies this fall term.
Contact information for each school:
Week of September 6, 2005: Students began arriving on campus to enroll in classes at the College of Arts and Sciences and at Lewis & Clark Law School. By September 7, the College of Arts and Sciences had accepted more than a dozen students and the law school had accepted approximately seven students displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
The graduate school's Oregon Center for Inquiry and Social Innovation is spearheading efforts to provide counseling teams to work under the direction of the American Red Cross. The graduate school is also coordinating education teams to provide primary or supplementary school services for evacuees. As individuals, and as members of the college community, Lewis & Clark students, faculty and staff are also collecting donations for those in need in hurricane-stricken areas. On September 12, Lewis & Clark’s Information Technology staff responded to a call for help from Tulane University. The Gulf Coast university’s IT staff had relocated in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and needed a specific type of backup tape drive to read and recover Tulane business school electronic files. No other institutions had responded to the call for help.
Lewis & Clark had just retired from service the specific backup tape drive needed by Tulane. By September 14, Lewis & Clark’s tape drive had arrived at Tulane’s temporary site in Houston. On Thursday, September 15, 2005, from noon to 1:30 p.m., Lewis & Clark hosted a panel discussion titled "Understanding Katrina and Its Aftermath: Local, National and Global Views."
This forum explored the tragedy following Hurricane Katrina, and the various responses by local and national state authorities, civil society, the international community, and the media.
Participants included: Elliott Young, associate professor of history; Marty Hart-Landsberg, professor of economics; Bruce Podobnik, associate professor of sociology; Aman Kubrom '07, vice president. Black Student Union; and Amelia Decker, Tulane University student and volunteer emergency medical technician involved in New Orleans rescue efforts. The panel is moderated by Lisa Webb, director of Ethnic Student Services.
The forum was cosponsored by the Latin American studies and political economy programs and Ethnic Student Services. The event was held in Templeton Student Center, Thayer. For more information contact Elliott Young at eyoung@lclark.edu.
On Friday, September 16, at 9 a.m., the graduate school hosted an open disucssion of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, which has affected many in the states of Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama.
A counseling psychology graduate student from the University of New Orleans, who has now enrolled at Lewis & Clark, attended as well. He told the story of how he and his family evacuated and what their lives have been like since. He said it’s the “little” things people have done that have helped to “make the whole ordeal more tolerable.” From his comments emerged the suggestion that L&C try to bring together evacuees in the Portland area. This evolved into a plan to bring the 20 displaced students enrolled at Lewis & Clark together so that they could meet and connect with each other. That reception is scheduled for September 20.
One of the first steps will be to create partnerships between displaced students and “sponsor” families made up of Lewis & Clark faculty, staff and administrators. If you are interested in participating, please contact the Oregon Center for Inquiry and Social Innovation at 503-768-6099 or orcenter@lclark.edu.
In observance of the national day of prayer, Lewis & Clark held a brief prayer and meditation vigil on Friday, September 16, at 12:30 p.m. in Agnes Flanagan Chapel. The vigil included prayers, silence and a ritual of remembrance for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Pianist Orla McDonagh, instructor in music, provided special music.
Both Agnes Flanagan Chapel and the South Campus Chapel were open Friday, September 16, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. for prayer and meditation. For more information, contact Mark Duntley, dean of the chapel, at 503-768-7082 or duntley@lclark.edu. September 27, 2005: Roger Groves, visiting professor of law, develops five easy steps to illustrate navigation through Internal Revenue Service tax codes that may apply to most routine donations to Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.
Groves, an expert on state and local taxation, has authored several articles and a book chapter on the tax treatment of nonprofit entities, valuation of contaminated real property, and judicial decision making in property tax matters.
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