Many of the 320 Tulane University students who have spent this semester at Boston University will soon return back to storm-stricken New Orleans, a city still torn with multi-billion-dollar damages that will take years of human effort to repair.
For some Tulane freshmen – and other students, for that matter – who have forged their first collegiate friendships at BU and gotten used to the fast pace along Commonwealth Avenue, they may wish BU would simply allow them to stay.
The rapid pace of events at the beginning of September forced BU and hundreds of other universities in the country to decide within days on whether to allow Tulane students a chance to continue their college careers, and Tulane students were welcomed here without having to go through BU’s regular application procedure.
BU should allow Tulane students the option to stay, but only after completing a regular transfer application that will determine their eligibility for enrollment here, just like the rest of transfer students have to do.
The transfer application deadline should be extended for Tulane students currently studying at BU, and especially for freshmen, because they may have more of an inclination to stay than Tulane’s upperclassmen.
This was not the feeling of several Tulane students who attended a speech by their university’s president yesterday at the Track and Tennis Center, where many expressed their enthusiasm for returning to New Orleans. One student even said she would return if she had to canoe to class, which Tulane’s president, Scott Cowen, said would not be the case, as the university has invested substantially in recovery efforts.
Cowen said the university has even leased a cruise ship, The Dream Princess, to house some 1,000 students whose dorm rooms and apartments have not yet been fully restored. Cowen told BU’s Tulane community that over 1,000 students did not know whether their off-campus housing would be ready for them when they returned in the spring. But nonetheless he expects 80 percent of Tulane students to return. They will certainly arrive at a more unified campus than most students see during their first year at college.
For students who still prefer to stay at BU, there is a good chance they will be accepted after going through the regular transfer application process, because Tulane’s academic reputation is at a comparable level to that of BU, and the two universities generally attract a similar academic quality of students.
Tulane students should not be discouraged from remaining at BU, but they should only receive an extension to their application deadline, and go through the same paperwork as other transfer students.