UO Offers to Help Students Affected by Katrina
Kudos to the UO administration for offering to help students from the Gulf Coast area. One question, though: what happens to a student from, say, UNO who is unable to return to school for longer than one term?
The university will make every effort to accommodate the students affected by the hurricane and will work with each student individually to address their specific needs, including admission, academic and personal advising, course placement, housing and financial aid,” Moseley said. “We expect that many of these students will want to return to the institutions where they originally enrolled as soon as possible. Those who are able to return to those institutions before the end of the term will receive tuition refunds.
(emphasis added)
Will the administration’s generosity expire if New Orleans takes longer than four months to rebuild? One would hope not.
Of course, hand-wringing over fucking law students seems a little disgusting at this point. Believe me: we will be fine.
One wrinkle to this is with law students. I know that the Law School is planning to take on refugee students, and is actively searching for housing for them. However, the legal system presents two complications.
First, the American Bar Association is the NCAA of law schools, and it has strict rules against transfers after the end of the first year. (The idea being that the first year is pretty much uniform, but after that each law school diverges in its curriculum. Why this would counsel against transfers is beyond me.)
Second, Louisiana is the redheaded stepchild of American law. Much of their legal landscape derives from French civil law rather than good old red-blooded English common law. I don’t know to what extent this affects Louisiana legal education, but it seems that it would be a big issue.