While UW-Madison students enjoyed the final rays of summer over Labor Day weekend, our collegiate counterparts affected by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath were picking up the pieces of their preempted fall semesters and contemplating the short- and long-term futures of their academic careers.
As many as 175,000 college students??-over twice the Camp Randall capacity-have been sent home after only a week of classes and are not likely to return for many months.
Even as water was pouring through broken levees in the direction of Tulane and other New Orleans universities last Wednesday, Chancellor Wiley announced that UW-Madison would enroll and house as many displaced students as possible-one of the first institutions to pledge such support. Many more institutions have since followed suit.
Thus far, in the wake of this national disaster, we have again come to realize that we cannot always count on local authorities to safeguard the general welfare. Nor can we entrust the federal bureaucracy to bail them out. While mayors, chiefs of police, governors, agency directors, cabinet secretaries and chief executives remain under scrutiny for their seemingly inadequate responses to Katrina, UW-Madison administrators did not wait a minute to tackle the situation, helping to spark a nation-wide response, leaving little doubt that those seeking to continue their studies will be able to do so.
Although the opportunity offered by UW-Madison and its peer institutions are only short-term solutions, it is our hope that Madison will have leave a lasting impression on those choosing to study here.
