Editorial:
Students seek refuge at Rider

As photographs, televised images and heart-wrenching tales travel up from New Orleans’ battered remains to inundate our senses, it’s hard to believe that anyone can find an iota of relief in the devastation. But the tragedy and disaster that befell Louisiana was inevitably followed by an outpouring of goodwill, which suggests that maybe human kindness is still the prevailing knee-jerk reaction to large-scale human suffering.

In addition to the fundraisers that both the Lawrenceville and Princeton campuses have held in order to raise money for disaster relief, the University has tried to make itself a temporary academic home for six students whose colleges –- Tulane, Xavier and Loyola universities –- were hit by Katrina’s rage.

While none of these students are residents of either New Orleans or its surrounding areas, their enrollment at colleges in a ravaged city suddenly forced them into the additional trauma of frantically seeking out new academic institutions for the fall semester.

These six students found that many other colleges, having already started their fall sessions, were reluctant to accept new students for just one semester. Their searching eventually led them to Rider, which had included itself in a national effort that aimed to take in students whose colleges were rendered both uninhabitable and nonfunctional by Katrina.

While only one of these students chose to live on campus, she is also the only one of the displaced students who is paying to attend Rider this semester. Rider’s president, Mordechai Rozanski, has offered to cover these students’ educational fees since they’ve already paid their own colleges’ fall tuition. Of course, since these students had to leave behind their belongings, they have assumed the financial burden of replacing whatever they couldn’t bring with them in their northern travels.

It is, unquestionably, both a great and magnanimous gesture on the University’s part to have embraced these students, especially when so many other colleges would have rather avoided the hassle than lend a hand to those who needed it. The college helped them prepare for the semester by helping to craft their schedules and getting them enrolled into the classes they need.

However, some questions beg to be asked. Why were these students left to pay for their own college supplies? Why are they being asked to shell out room and board fees instead of being accommodated free of charge? And why are five of the students actually residents of this area? Wouldn’t it have been a greater act of generosity to also take in students whose homes and lives and families were all centered around New Orleans? While many students who lived in New Orleans may have wanted to stay with their families, or were too traumatized by the experience to even attempt a return to normal college life, one has to assume that there are a number of college students who would like to continue with their education as a way of coping after every other facet of their lives fell apart.

But Rider has made a difference to six students who have experienced a sort of tragedy most of us can’t even begin to comprehend. We should be proud of our University for recognizing their need and for being so willing to give them a temporary academic haven.

This weekly editorial expresses the majority opinion of The Rider News editorial board and is written by the Opinion Editor.