For those of you curious about our status, Loyola University New
Orleans School of Law started classes for a compressed, accelerated fall
semester a month ago on October 3 here at the University of Houston Law
Center. Classes go through Dec. 17 and then exams will be given in January
back in New Orleans, with the Spring Semester scheduled to be pushed back
two weeks.
Due to the extraordinary efforts of our administration, faculty, and
staff (several of whom lost everything in the post-Katrina floods), we
have roughly half of our student body here, including two-thirds or so of
our first year students. We are offering a full 1L schedule of classes and
a fair number of upper-class electives. As our Dean mentioned early on,
compared to the suffering and loss of others and what New Orleans and the
entire Gulf Coast has experienced, the resumption of one law school's
academic calendar is a minor issue. But to our students, faculty, and
staff continuing the semester was very important.
The debt of gratitude we owe to the University of Houston Law Center is
immense and they have been accommodating us in ways that are too numerous
to list. And, personally, the folks here at the O'Quinn Law Library have
been extremely helpful to me - I had an office waiting when I showed up
and was able to start working right away. Thank you, thank you, thank
you...
Because a large number of our students here didn't have the books for
their classes, all the major legal publishers agreed to donate what we
needed. So with much appreciation, I want to thank Lori Parizek at
Thomson-West, Daniel Eckroad and Steve Errick at Apen, Lisa Hughes at
Lexis-Nexis, and John and Bob Claitor at Claitor's Publishing in Baton
Rouge. Also, Denis O'Brien and the rest of the staff at the Harvard Law
Review even shipped us some spare Blue Books for the students who needed
them for their legal research and writing class. These folks were all
immensely helpful in giving our students the books they required, and very
patient with me as we tried to get an accurate count of how many students
we had and how many copies of what books we needed (our final - hopefully
- supplemental order of books came in Thursday). At last count we've
received a combined total of around 3800 books with a list price of just
over $100,000. I'm sure many other people at these publishers went the
extra mile to help get these books to us quickly, and I wish I knew them
by name to express my appreciation to them personally.
The decisions these publishers made to help our students and to replace
materials lost by law firms in the region were extremely generous acts of
charity and are great examples of good corporate citizenship. Oh, and
without even our asking, Lexis-Nexis donated study aids related to all our
classes. That shipment alone was over three thousand pounds of books
loaded onto three pallets and you should have seen the students digging
into those sixty-something boxes. It was a combination of Christmas
morning and a piranha feeding frenzy (a very well behaved feeding frenzy,
I must say).
I also want to thank those of you at the 68 law schools where the other
half of our students are currently taking classes. Most of you have only a
few students, but a couple of law schools have over a dozen of them, and
I'm sure it took a bit of effort to integrate them into the semester. For
helping them get up and running with Westlaw and Lexis, finding the
national reporters, getting a study carrel, whatever, thank you for
assisting them when we can't.
Being uptown and near the river, the University and the Law School both
weathered the hurricane with little damage. For comparison sakes, look at
pictures of the various branches of the public library:
http://nutrias.org/~nopl/welcome.htm
(scroll down to "Photographs and Damage Assessments", particularly the MLK
branch, which is out in East New Orleans, where some of the worst flooding
occurred.) Funding for our public libraries has been problematic for a
long time, so now, I can't even imagine...
Finally, let me add that though the situation in New Orleans has
largely dropped off the national news horizon, the city's long-term
prospects still present a big question mark. Stories that ARE making the
news focus on the bubbles of normalcy that have come back - the French
Quarter and uptown, for the most part. But 60-70% of the city sustained
significant damage, and though folks don't visit those parts, that's where
the majority of our citizens lived. The city is running on various lines
of credit that the mayor has said will run out in March, and however crass
it may seem given the loss of life and property, we are a long way from
having the tax base the city needs to survive. AALS and ALA have changed
their meetings in January to elsewhere (for various reasons), and I'm
optimistic that the city and the convention center will be up to having
AALL in summer 2007, but in the meantime, if you have ever visited and
enjoyed the city, we need you NOW! Hotels and airlines are up and running
so if you are at all curious, please come for a weekend or a few days or
whatever. After mid-December I will personally give you a tour of the
city, so please come and spend money if you can! The zoo will re-open
around Thanksgiving, most of our museums are open now or will open soon,
and many of the best restaurants and shops are open. Christmas and Mardi
Gras will both be particularly meaningful events this year, so make your
reservations now! Sorry to be a commercial shill like this, but right now,
that is the quickest way to help get the city back on its feet.
Brian Huddleston bhuddle@loyno.edu
Senior Reference Librarian http://www.loyno.edu/~bhuddle
Loyola University New Orleans School of Law
RELOCATED TEMPORARILY to the Univeristy of Houston Law Center, Fall 05
Room 13B, U.H. O'Quinn Law Library
Office: 1-713-743-1238 (No Voicemail Working)
Cell Phone: 1-251-404-5118 (Cingular Cell Service)
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