Alumni Association Update

In late August, Rasheena Harris was settling into historic New Orleans as a first-year MBA student at Tulane University when Hurricane Katrina hit. Instead, Harris evacuated the city, along with all her classmates and millions of residents of the region.

At the time, most expected to return within days, but history did not unfold that way. Harris, a Philadelphia native, found a temporary home at Wharton for the fall semester, along with 11 other New Orleans-area graduate students and 18 undergraduates.

In the days after the hurricane, Penn announced that it would offer academically qualified Philadelphia-area students enrolled at colleges and universities in hurricane-stricken areas the opportunity to take fall semester classes at Penn. But matching students to the opportunity was complicated by the dispersal of the New Orleans evacuees and the destruction of communication networks.

Harris learned about the opportunity at Wharton and told several of her classmates about it. The grapevine worked. Within a matter of days, Wharton's Graduate Division received 40 applications from students at Tulane University and The University of New Orleans, 12 of whom were eligible for Wharton's MBA program. The next step, says Parker Snowe, associate director of Wharton's Graduate Division, was to get them to Philadelphia as quickly as possible.

The displaced students now at Wharton include Philadelphia residents, as well as residents from farflung states and countries. The students from New Orleans were welcomed into the Wharton community, joining learning teams and taking part in activities. Harris, for example, became involved in the Whitney M.Young Conference, held in December. Wharton students became active fundraisers for victims of the storm. The undergraduate Wharton Council ordered 5,000 bracelets in Mardi Gras colors with the words "The Big Easy" to sell on Locust Walk and at all undergraduate benefit events. Wharton alumni clubs responded to the Hurricane Katrina crisis. Most notably, the Wharton Club of Houston, spearheaded by president emeritus Jonathan H. Lack, WG'91, reached out to help displaced Wharton alumni find jobs in Houston.

Tulane University sustained little damage compared to some other areas of the city and some other New Orleans universities, and MBA and undergraduate classes are scheduled to begin February 9, 2006, with two 12-week terms running back to back into the summer so that students who did not take fall schedules can catch up.

"New Orleans is New Orleans because of the people, but they're not there now. It's a ghost town," says Harris. "The students are part of the community that will return, and bring the city back to life."