College Life in the North: A little Colder

Today's Recorder newspaper included an AP story about how the thousands of college students who were uprooted by Katrina are faring in their new temporary colleges.

"An estimated 75,000 college students were displaced from New Orleans by the storm. Many are still in the South, or at least at schools close to family. But others are temporarily enrolled at colleges far from home, both geographically and culturally.

Amherst College took its visitors shopping for the winter clothes they suddenly needed, and it is even paying for them to fly home for Thanksgiving. Their Amherst seminars have been a nice change of pace in both structure and content. 'We discussed homosexuality, which is definitely a big taboo at Xavier, being Catholic and all that,' said one student.

Another student admitted "all of us here are getting a little bit of cabin fever...we're so used to going to the movies and having so many opportunities in a big city, going to a mall...there's definitely a division between the Chicago students and the New Orleans students, said another transplant. "They're from two different cultures."