<p>jmmom – I admire your spirit and hope the best for your son.</p>
<p>Many of the institutions that accepted Tulane students (some for free) with an understanding they would return to Tulane will now be in a bind. My son’s school took close to 200 of them.</p>
<p>Beyond Tulane, I have great fears that this is just a symbol of what is going on with New Orleans. We struck up a conversation in NYC a few weeks ago with a transplanted medical professor from LSU. Their hospital was a wreck, he said. He also said that state and county employees were not being paid and that virtually no federal money was yet making its way to New Orleans. He was planning to go back (his house was not destroyed, but he had given up on plans he’d had to build a new house). His son, a lawyer, had transplanted to Houston and could not yet get any sense of whether the firm would be up and running in New Orleans again, since their business clients also were not rebuilding yet. It was almost a sense of suspended animation – no one could make any plans.</p>
<p>I feel worst for the people who have nothing. But, the truth is, that if businesses do not return, and an institution like Tulane cannot recoup, New Orleans is not likely to recover.</p>
<p>Soon after the hurricane, I read a column that suggested a TVA type authority be assigned to rebuild New Orleans. It noted that the TVA had such strict oversight that virtually no corruption happened under its watch. How can we make this happen in New Orleans?</p>