Students head back to a much-changed Tulane

Tulane students resume class today -- and tomorrow morning, some of them will wake up on a cruise ship in the Mississippi.

After the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Tulane students have returned to New Orleans for classes. And from housing accommodations to academics, Tulane students who spent the past semester at Penn are returning to a university very different from the one they left.

Take the students and faculty who are heading back to campus only to find their apartments and dorm rooms unlivable.

To accommodate them, the school has leased two cruise ships for the semester. Rooms on the ships will be offered on an "as-needed basis," according to Tulane spokesman Michael Strecker.

Despite the challenges still facing the school and the city, Strecker noted that "everybody's excited to return.

"The campus looks great," he said, adding that "92 percent of undergrads have come back."

Approximately 88 percent of all Tulane students will return this semester, he said. Not all, however, will do so without reservations.

Tulane freshman Thomas Krouse, who took classes at Penn this past fall, said he originally had mixed feelings about the upcoming semester, which will be his first at Tulane.

"I love Penn. ... I really did want to stay," he said.

In keeping with policy, Penn administrators did not allow Tulane students to apply to transfer to Penn for the spring semester -- transfers are permitted only for the fall. Krouse said that although he hopes to transfer to Penn next fall, he understands why he had to return to New Orleans.

"Looking back now, I understand the greater influence if Tulane continued to lose students," he said.

Other Tulane students -- like sophomore Jane Schulman -- are eager to return to the university they call home.

"The circumstances why we were [at Penn] put a downer on it," she said.

A Philadelphia native, she also noted differences between her experience at Penn and that in the South.

"I feel people are friendlier at Tulane. If you walk down Locust Walk, random people don't say 'Hi,'" she said.

As a former marketing major, Schulman will be directly affected by several departmental cuts across Tulane over the next few years, including the loss of its marketing department in 2007.

Approximately 230 Tulane professors will lose their jobs within the next year and a half as a result of these cuts.

But Schulman said that having to change her major to business is not enough of a reason for her to consider transferring.

Other departments at Tulane -- including its studio art department -- will reduce the number of classes offered. Danielle Narveson -- a senior who spent the fall semester at Penn -- said she would take art courses for her major at other New Orleans universities such as Loyola.

"People love Tulane so much that they'll work around it," Schulman said.

Schulman's off-campus apartment was damaged in the hurricane, but was repaired in time for her return.

Those who were not as lucky will be housed on the cruise ships, which are docked in the Mississippi River. A shuttle service will take students from their rooms to the Tulane campus and back.

"It's unprecedented right now," Strecker said. "We have a lot of flexibility with the ship."

Narveson said that she does not think the cruise ship will be a very popular choice for housing.

"The nice thing about Tulane is it's a very small campus, very tight-knit community," she said, adding that living far from campus could be inconvenient.

Although Narveson said she had a great semester at Penn, she is also excited to return to the lively atmosphere of the place she termed the "City of Sin."

Tulane "is doing a lot to make sure the students coming back will have a good time," she said. "The city is trying to go all-out for Mardi Gras" on Feb. 28.

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