Of the 645 visiting students from New Orleans colleges who attended Nicholls last semester approximately 150 of them decided to continue their education here, according to Courtney Cassard, director of enrollment services.”It’s a pretty substantial number that decided to stay,” Cassard said. “With registration now going until Thursday (today), we don’t know what’s going to happen with that.”
As visiting students, they did not have to present any credentials in order to seek a degree, according to Cassard. In order for those students to continue attending Nicholls, all they had to do was fill out a degree-seeking application.
“Once we did that we gathered whatever transcript that we needed to determine their status and if they were eligible for admission,” Cassard said. “Financial aid has been working with all these students, too. That’s pretty much all they had to do.”
According to Cassard, throughout the fall the University had on-going information sent to these students about what they would need to do if they decided to stay.
“We were in constant communication with them throughout the semester,” Cassard said. “We wanted to make it clear that we understood that they were visiting students, and we were here to aid the institutions in New Orleans that were closed.”
Cassard said that all the universities in New Orleans are open with the exception of the University of New Orleans, which will open on Jan. 30.
“Some of them (the students), as we knew they would, fell in love with the area and the people and the classes that they had here and they decided to stay,” Cassard said.
Jordan Hotard, criminal justice junior and former Loyola student from Berwick, decided to continue attending Nicholls because it was easier for her to stay at home than to move back to New Orleans.
“It’s going to be really hard to find a new apartment because everyone is looking for apartments,” Hotard said. “It’s going to be completely different (in New Orleans). Certain people aren’t going to go back; it’s just going to be different.
Hotard said that she does not prefer Nicholls to Loyola. But, she is already settled back at home, all of her belongings are moved, and she has a job.
“I’m already all set up here,” Hotard said.
Jovan Thomas, public health senior and Dillard student from Thibodaux, decided to return to Dillard because of all the time and money he has spent there and because he would like to graduate from a historically black college.
“If I were to stay at Nicholls, then I was going to be a whole semester behind,” Thomas said. “That just didn’t make any sense to me.”
Another concern Thomas had was his classes.
“Nicholls wasn’t going to accept some of my credits,” Thomas said.
Thomas said that he enjoyed his time at Nicholls because it gave him a chance to see all of his high school friends, but did not like how things were handled in the classroom compared to Dillard.
“I was used to a small classroom setting,” Thomas said. “There were no more than 15-20 students in a class. Dillard is very small, and I was used to that.”
According to Foxnews.com, colleges around the country offered to take in the 75,000 to 100,000 students who were displaced, and most of the colleges offered free tuition to those students who had already paid tuition at their New Orleans schools. Most of the colleges that welcomed the displaced students are now telling them that they must either return to their original schools or try to apply as transfer students.
Not all schools that welcomed displaced students are offering the same open-door convenience for this spring semester, according to LSURevielle.com
LSURevielle.com said that displaced students attending Rice University, Harvard University and the University of California at Berkeley will not have an opening at those schools next semester. However, students who relocated to University of Texas at Austin, LSU, Texas A&M and University of Alabama will.
