Amherst College Responds to Hurricane Katrina

Letter from Anthony W. Marx, September 15, 2005

To all Members of the Amherst College Community:

As we conclude the second week of the semester, I want to update you on the College’s response to the tragic events in the Gulf Coast and thank the many students, faculty and staff who have reached out to those affected by this devastating storm.

Over the past two weeks, we have e-mailed and contacted all Amherst College students and alumni from the Gulf area to see how we could be of assistance to them; and we have been working with current students whose financial aid packages may need adjustment under these circumstances. The family of one of our students, who lost their home, are currently in residence at the College.

We also have reached out to Gulf Coast college students whose academic plans were disrupted by Hurricane Katrina. We contacted Amherst Regional High School to inquire about their alumni enrolled in Gulf Coast colleges and universities; beyond that, we have offered fall courses to local students who had been studying at New Orleans institutions. (These students will not be charged tuition or board, which they had paid to their home institutions.) In addition, in collaboration with Williams College, we began the important but difficult task of contacting junior and senior pre-med students from Xavier University in Louisiana, a historically black college that produces one of the largest and most important cohorts of African-American pre-med students in the country. We now have seven Xavier students here at Amherst, together with five students from Tulane and other New Orleans institutions. We have also invited Xavier faculty to come to Amherst so that they can join with their students, our students and faculty.  We see this as an opportunity to extend our help to those who need it and to learn from this group’s presence and participation on campus. I hope you will all join me in continuing to welcome these students to Amherst.

In addition, Dean of Faculty Greg Call has asked our faculty for contacts at Gulf colleges and universities in need of assistance. After reaching out to these colleagues, we are currently housing three families at Amherst. One colleague, Linnette Reed, is teaching Spanish this semester at the College, and another, Lucius R. Weathersby, is working with our Music Department as a visiting scholar and artist. John Sebastian is a visiting scholar in the English Department. There are good possibilities that these faculty will be on campus for the year and will be teaching here in the spring. As mentioned above, we hope to have several Xavier faculty join us as well.

Amherst’s outreach has extended far beyond the administrative level. Student groups are coordinating more than two dozen fund-raising efforts. Earlier this week, Coach Tom Carmean drove to Louisiana to drop off a truck filled with donations coordinated by our athletic teams. John Pourciau ’05, a Baton Rouge native assisting with the relief work in Louisiana, helped coordinate the distribution to those who badly needed the supplies.

Up-to-date information about these and other efforts, as well as news from alumni on the Gulf Coast, can be found at www.amherst.edu/katrina. Students, faculty and staff may also add their own posts about events, fundraising initiatives and other information.

I thank you all for all you’ve done already, and I encourage you all to continue your efforts in these areas. The terrible events of the past two weeks have challenged us all—as individuals, as a college and as a nation.

Yours,

Anthony W. Marx