CAL to take in hurricane students
Cal to take in refugee students
By J.K. Dineen
Published: Thursday, September 1, 2005 10:13 PM PDT
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Copyright © 2004-2005 San Francisco Examiner
UC Berkeley has joined Syracuse University and Cornell University in offering to take in refugee students from colleges in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans.
With New Orleans under strict evacuation orders in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, major universities such as Tulane and Loyola are shut down for the foreseeable future, leaving students in limbo.
UC Berkeley spokeswoman Noel Gallagher said the university has spots for 50 displaced students and the Boalt Hall School of Law could take in 20 law students.
Santa Cruz native Thea Madeleine Harter-Leahy, a Tulane stud-ent, said she was desperate to find a campus to call home. She escaped New Orleans on Saturday night and is staying with a friend in Houston.
She said she had been contacting UC and other schools all week trying to get a last-minute transfer. She posted her predicament on the community Web site craigslist.com and has been overwhelmed by the generous response, including a family in Marin who offered to take her in and loan her a car.
"I have exactly three changes of clothes, my cell phone, laptop and puppy Lolita," she wrote The Examiner in an e-mail. "All of my furniture, pictures, some important documents — everything is gone."
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