College sophomore Catie Broussard and her mother, Lynn Tinto, evacuated New Orleans at 4:00 a.m. on the Sunday before Hurricane Katrina, driving 24 hours over the course of two days to Penn.
Tinto then turned the car back around and immediately drove back to the flooded city. She is a member of the Army Corps of Engineers and was needed back home.
Currently living on a barge, Tinto has been working in New Orleans since then. Despite assurances from her mother that she is safe, Broussard says that she worries about her daily.
Yet Broussard is only one of 24 Penn students from New Orleans.
Ashwin Rao, a College sophomore, still has not been able to get in contact with all of his friends from home.
College freshman Samantha Sher's two-story house is completely flooded, and her grandfather had to be rescued by boat from his apartment. Her long-time friend and classmate Ashley Barriere says that her house escaped serious damage.
The University Chaplain, Rev. William Gipson, comes from Northeastern Louisiana and yearns to be able to join his brother, a pastor, in his relief efforts in Shreveport.
The four students also all agree that they want very much to get home.
They are also adamant that they don't want anyone to feel sorry for them.
"I don't think people should feel pity for us," Rao says. "We're pretty strong people down there."
Catie Broussard
Broussard was the most emphatic about not wanting anybody to feel sorry for her. She refused to be photographed for this article because she was afraid it would give her face away -- she doesn't want the attention.
"I feel like the luckiest person in the world because my family is OK," she says, adding that she has been able to get in contact with all her friends back home.
Despite this "luck," Tinto will be taking time out of her job to go assess the damage done to their one-story house, which was half filled with water.
Her mother has been a civil engineer in the army for the last 25 years.
Normally, Broussard says, her mother's job is to coordinate the crews that repair the levees and maintain the system's navigation locks.
"Her job times a million is what they're doing down there now," Broussard says. "She's been coordinating efforts with getting the [levees] fixed ... I'm very proud of her."
Because communication into New Orleans has been so difficult, Broussard says that her mother has not been able to give her in-depth detail of what she's been doing.
Still, she says that she knows her mother has been working long hours -- from 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. -- and that she has spent much of her time coordinating crews as well as flying over the city, surveying the damage and then briefing the Generals.
The last few weeks have been nerve racking for Broussard, and she was particularly worried when she started hearing reports of looting and gunfire in New Orleans.
"She assures me that she is safe," Broussard says, though she admits she still worries.
"It's been tough of course, but everyone at Penn has been great, very supportive."
Still, it was difficult to return to campus this year. She says that she knew it was the first thing people thought of when they saw her.
"How am I supposed to respond when [people] ask where you're from? Am I supposed to say 'down south' or 'New Orleans,'" she says.
Though she considered taking the semester off, Broussard says her mom wouldn't let her, and the experience inspired her to minor in Urban Studies, so that she can be better equipped to help New Orleans when she returns home.
"I'm very optimistic about the rebuilding process," she says.
Ashwin Rao
"Mardi Gras will happen," predicts Rao, equally confident in his hometown's ability to rebuild.
Also like Broussard, Rao counts himself as among the lucky.
He lives in Kenner, just two blocks from Lake Pontchartrain -- the lake that spilled into New Orleans when the levees broke.
"The levees held on our side of the city," he says. "If our levees had not held, our damage would have been a whole lot worse."
As it is, water filled up between 18 and 24 inches in the lower level of his two-story house. There was also a fair amount of wind-damage to his shingled roof. Because of mold and mildew, the house is currently unlivable.
Since the hurricane, Rao has not been able to contact two of his fellow interns at the Tulane Medical Center from this summer, both transfer students from England.
"They didn't have a car or any way to get out, so they evacuated to a highrise building in New Orleans, the same one that we worked in," Rao says. He hasn't heard from them since.
He says he has also not been able to get in touch with a friend who is a senior at Tulane.
Despite all of his worries, Rao says that being at Penn has been good for him.
"Being busy with classes and friends has helped me ease my mind off of it," he says. "I'm mindful of the things going on at home, but I'm not dwelling on it."
Rao himself wants to get some of his fraternity brothers or friends together to go volunteer at a hurricane shelter in Philadelphia.
Samantha Sher and Ashley Barriere
When Samantha Sher and Ashley Barriere were featured in The Daily Pennsylvanian on Sept. 1, Sher had just learned that her 89-year-old grandfather was going to be airlifted to safety.
The plans fell through, and the holocaust survivor -- who was too weak to travel because he had recently suffered multiple heart attacks -- was rescued by a boat passing by his second-story apartment.
Though currently in Houston with her uncle, Sher reports that "He is pretty traumatized."
This, obviously, was not an ideal start to freshman year.
"The first day of classes, it was the first thing that every teacher talked about, from Ancient Greece to poli-sci," Sher says.
"It's mostly hard because saying you're from New Orleans is definitely a conversation starter. You get a lot of pity faces, which is probably the worst," Sher says.
Barriere agrees with her friend's assessment, noting that because they are freshmen, they are constantly asked where they are from.
"I've had the same conversation like 100 times," she says, adding, "It's nice that everyone cares though."
Sher and Barriere have been going to school together since pre-school, so they have relied heavily on each other for support in dealing with the hurricane.
"She'll understand things that my roommate won't," Sher says.
Many people not from New Orleans, Sher says, "tend to feel awkward around us ... Nobody takes a class on how to talk to people who have water up to their roofs."
They both said that they have also as a byproduct become closer to the other students from New Orleans, a point that both Broussard and Rao also mentioned.
"It's nice to have a mini-support group," says Sher.
Sher and Barriere, like Broussard and Rao, don't want anybody's pity.
"It's more empathy we're looking for than pity," Sher says, though, Barriere is quick to add that "you can't expect empathy from people who didn't live there."
William Gipson
Chaplain William Gipson, as it turns out, is one of the chief dealers of empathy at the University -- it's his job -- and he comes from Monroe, Louisiana.
Despite not being actually from New Orleans, Gipson noted that "for the state as whole, there is a great sense of pride" and community.
He feels that the work he is doing at Penn is valuable, but says he longs to go home.
"I am disoriented and a little bit frustrated that I am not on the ground making a concrete difference," he says.
Gipson plans on taking advantage of President Amy Gutmann's offer of three weeks paid leave for staff who assist with the relief efforts.
Right now, he says, his contribution is being made through his family.
One of his sisters, a retired State Farm Insurance agent, has gone back to work and started processing claims in Baton Rouge for displaced New Orleansians.
Another sister, an assistant district attorney in Louisiana's Ouachita Parish, has been assisting people with legal matters.
His older brother, a pastor, is organizing relief efforts in Shreveport.
"It's just the way we were reared," says Gipson of his family's involvement.
Still, he wishes he were there himself.
"It has to do with my memories of growing up there, going to undergraduate school there, my family being there."
The future remains unclear for all New Orleanians, and it is no different for the students at Penn. Estimates on when they would next be able to return to their houses ranged from Thanksgiving to never.
Barriere's parents, for instance, plan on moving back into their unflooded home within the month.
Sher's house, though, is all but ruined and may never again be inhabitable.
All of the students said they were frustrated by the government's slow response to the catastrophe, but as uncertain as their own personal futures may be, they are confident about their hometown's ability to rebound.
"People should not write off New Orleans," Broussard says, "We're coming back as strong as ever."
