The people in shelters on campus are not the only ones affected by Hurricane Katrina. Some of Nicholls’ own students were affected by the storm.One such student is Gary Wilkinson, agricultural business senior from Jefferson.

He evacuated with his family from his home in Jefferson to Lafayette two days before the storm hit.

Thinking the storm wasn’t going to hit the area, he only took a few items of clothing with him. His mother packed family pictures and items that were important to the family. They were not concerned with the financial needs.

“Clothes can be replaced; material things can be replaced, but memories cannot,” Wilkinson says.

His home was damaged, but it is fixable. The siding was torn off of the house, and a tree fell onto his truck.

“It is irritating,” Wilkinson said. “I drive an older truck and insurance companies don’t feel that it’s worth much. It’s worth more to me than to them because it got me back and forth to where I needed to go.”

Wilkinson and his family plan to remain in Jefferson and fix their home. He said it gives him a headache dealing with paperwork, insurance, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and starting school again.

He said the one thing he would have wanted to change is how prepared everyone was for the storm.

“A lot of people have pride and don’t want to leave,” Wilkinson says.

“I feel a kind of disgust for people who are taking advantage of the situation by looting. TVs don’t serve as survival,” Wilkinson says.

He also said he doesn’t agree with the way the media is portraying the storm, showing only what they want to show: the bodies.

“I guess that’s what they use to keep the audience glued to the screen,” Wilkinson says.

Farrell Harrison, culinary arts junior, is from Chalmette. His family evacuated their home at 5 a.m. on Sunday, Aug. 28.

“My dad woke up, realized it was a category five, got my mom and they left,” Harrison said. He was not with his family in Chalmette when they evacuated. “I wasn’t there because they started talking about it on Saturday,” Harrison said. “By Saturday, me getting to Chalmette wasn’t going to happen at all because everybody was already heading out.”

His family took a few pairs of clothes and some money. Everything else in their home is now floating, since their home is now underwater. His parents did not take their pictures, Harrison said, because, “They weren’t expecting it to be that bad.”

His parents were not sure of where they were going to evacuate to, so they left the dog in the laundry room with a lot of food.

Harrison’s family ended up in Jackson, Miss., where they stayed with friends. Harrison withstood the hurricane with a friend at his apartment in Thibodaux. They put out sandbags, listened to music and played X-Box games until the electricity went out.

Harrison says he will miss being able to go to New Orleans freely and the House of Blues, but it is nothing compared to how much he misses his house, dog and childhood memories.

“It hit me a couple of days ago,” Harrison says. “My mom sent me an E-mail saying that we are probably going to have to bulldoze the house.”

He is thankful that all of his friends were able to get out of town and they are now safe.

Harrison and his family lost many things that have meaning to them. All of their pictures were in albums stored on a bottom shelf along with his parents’ wedding album and the baby pictures. His brother lost his high school ring, and Harrison’s high school photos and scrapbooks were at the bottom of his closet.

A major loss to the family is their dog. Harrison said if he could change anything, he would have taken the pictures and his dog. Also, they lost a firebox that held the deeds to their house and vehicles. Harrison had recently moved to Thibodaux and had most of his personal items out of his Chalmette home.

Harrison is adjusting to being back at school and trying to get everything back to normal.

Harrison couldn’t believe the image that had to be portrayed of New Orleans and how much it was in poverty. “It’s just the looting puts a bad image not only on the city,” Harrison says, “but on the entire state. We’re never going to be able to regain that.”

Harrison said that it was good at first to see how much the national media was paying attention to the disaster.

Harrison says that now the media is horrible and just trying to find who is to blame. Harrison says, “They’re still finding bodies and people are out of homes. Forget who’s to blame and fix the problem.”

He said the media is capturing the loss the storm has caused, but they are also just showing certain people. They are showing those who stayed in the city, not the people that still lost everything but had evacuated. He says they should also show the thousands of volunteers who are helping at shelters and opening their homes for these people.