After the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, tens of colleges were flooded, and some destroyed. Two students, Paul Jordon and Jordon Lenter, relocated to Greensboro to attend Guilford as transfer students from Tulane University. Paul Jordon, sophomore, came to Guilford because his mother was familiar with the college. “She knew it was a good school,” said Jordon. He is a double major in History and Asian Studies.
Originally from Manhattan, Jordon’s family moved to Chapel Hill, N.C. when he was a young child. Jordon initially wanted to attend UNC Chapel Hill to be closer to home after the Katrina disaster. “They basically told me to go take a hike,” said Jordon.
Jordon applied to UNC Chapel Hill as a transfer student two days after their deadline. Jordon was rejected due to this technicality, despite his extenuating circumstances. His mother then got in touch with the administration at Guilford, and Jordon was registered at the college two days later.
“This is a really nice place,” said Jordon.
In the catastrophe in New Orleans, Jordon considers himself lucky. “All my friends are okay,” said Jordon. “All I lost was my refrigerator and some Aqua Teen Hunger Force DVDs.”
Jordon Lenter was out of town with his parents for a wedding during the weekend of Katrina. Because they were going to be away for three days, Lenter put his three dogs in a three-story animal shelter for the weekend.
When Katrina hit, Lenter feared his dogs had drowned and could not get in contact with his grandmother. With the water level rising quickly, the head of the animal shelter contacted a congressman and arranged for charter buses to come to the animal shelter.
Unable to drive the buses closer than a mile from the shelter, dump trucks were called in to deposit sand between the vehicle and the animal shelter.
Once the sand bridge was built, the animals were driven to the charter buses to be evacuated over the span of two days.
Overhearing this, first-year Kellin Rowlands said “That’s ridiculous. When are they planning on doing that for the poor black people of New Orleans?”
While Lenter was staying with family in Texas, a family friend called them. “He explained that he had a house in North Carolina that he was not living in,” said Lenter. “He told us that he would feel guilty not offering it to a family in need. We had to come here. We had no other place to go.”
“As a child, I had always heard of the big hurricane that would one day wash the city of New Orleans away, but I never believed it would ever come,” Lenter said. “This whole experience has just been so emotional and surreal.”
Lenter’s house, located a quarter-mile from where the levy broke, received minimal damage.
Knowing that UNCG was a public school, Lenter believed that it would be easier to transfer there, as opposed to a smaller private college like Guilford. UNCG told Lenter that he would still have to pay at least half of the annual tuition.
Lenter talked with the administration at Guilford. “The National Assosiations involved in financial aid told us that the transfer New Orleans students had paid tuition once already this year,” said Randy Doss, “so we honored that.”
There is a history of students transferring to Guilford after a crisis. In 1944 there were nine Japanese students that were admitted into Guilford. Most were transfer students from the University of Washington.
“Japanese students were not allowed to continue their studies on the west coast due to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II,” said Gwen Erickson, Librarian for the Friends Historical Collection.
Randy Doss, Vice President for Enrollment and Campus Life, said, “In the 21 years that I’ve been here, nothing has ever happened like this. So this is untested ground.”
While neither student plans on staying at Guilford, both stated that they enjoy the college and are happy to be here.