National tragedies have a way of starting New Yorker Daniel Hyman's semesters off on a bad yet motivational foot. He remembers the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks during his freshman year of high school and Hurricane Katrina during his first year of college in New Orleans.
The 20-year-old sophomore in AU's School of International Service didn't expect to spend his school years bundled up in the cold winds of Washington, D.C. Instead, Hyman had planned on immersing himself in jazz and warm breezes as a student at Tulane University in New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina changed these plans on freshman move in day in August 2005.
Shortly after Hyman unpacked his belongings, university staff announced students would have to leave the dorms because Katrina was making its way toward Tulane. Hyman and his family checked into a nearby hotel for the evening and were set on going back to the university - until they turned on the weather channel.
The weatherman said the hurricane "was going to bury New Orleans," Hyman said.
The storm was getting closer to the city, and Hyman's family decided to rent a car and leave.
"We were just driving as far as we could," trying to get away from the storm, Hyman said.
By midnight the Hymans reached Tuscaloosa, Ala., and New Orleans had already been hit severely. Hyman had left all of his personal belongings in his now deserted dorm room, along with his future plans. That night he asked his parents, "What am I going to do for college?"
The Road Back to a Broken City
Hyman ended up returning to New York and spending his first semester at Hofstra University on Long Island.
"I was very gung-ho on going back" to Tulane, he said.
As New Orleans struggled to rebuild itself, Hyman said he began to feel guilty for not being there.
"I was almost contributing to the problem by leaving," he said.
Wanting to return to New Orleans may have been an easy decision for Hyman, but his parents had reservations. The city had been looted and contaminated, and there was no nearby hospital. Memories of Sept. 11 flashed through the minds of the Hymans as they decided the fate of Daniel's spring semester. News reports of polluted air that had been originally deemed "OK" at New York's Ground Zero were beginning to surface. The Hymans feared that the same would happen to places considered "safe" in New Orleans.
Remembering the devastation of New York made Hyman want to return to Tulane even more. Hyman said he "bought into the ethos of 'come back, rebuild.'" He transferred back to Tulane the next semester.
A City in Disrepair
Upon his return, Hyman volunteered to clean up in the city's Ninth Ward, where the levees broke and severe floods destroyed homes and businesses.
"I felt very proud. I felt like I was part of something," Hyman said, describing a bond among the students who had come back.
Just as New Orleans was not the same city Hyman had left in the fall, Tulane had changed, too. The university cut its annual operating budget and reported an estimated $90 to $125 million shortfall for the 2005-'06 school year. Tulane laid off about 2,200 employees over the year, eliminated six engineering programs and 27 doctoral programs and suspended eight NCAA Division 1 athletic programs.
Hyman's frustrations began to grow as his university and the city stagnated.
"The federal government screwed up," he said. "A lot of things were botched. ... [New Orleans] could have been America's challenge, but it's highlighted as the death of a city."
Leaving New Orleans to Help New Orleans
Hyman didn't want to wait for the government to help New Orleans. Instead, he started a petition to rebuild the broken levees, which were supposedly built to withstand category-three hurricanes like Katrina. Hyman's project, SaveBigEasy.org, is a petition to pass a bill in Congress that would allot government funding in Louisiana to build category five-strength levees.
The petition currently has about 17,000 signatures and Hyman is shopping it to congressmen and congresswomen.
Hyman's project brought him to D.C. when he realized Tulane's and New Orleans' recovery processes were at a standstill. He transferred to AU, and says being in the nation's capital has made it easier to contact politicians about his project.
Transferring to AU meant giving up a $20,000 scholarship at Tulane and settling for half that amount from his new school.
Hyman said that AU offers a better academic program, but he still feels ties to New Orleans. Nevertheless, he said experiencing three different universities over three semesters has impacted him.
"I wasn't a very flexible person," he said. "I learned to be more flexible, more mature ... [and] to appreciate things can change so fast."
For more on Hyman's project, visit his blog at www.savebigeasy.org/blog/
