Giving Aid To Historically Black Colleges In New Orleans (Updated)

The United Negro College Fund is asking for contributions to special fund 3 of its member universities/colleges that were hit by Hurricane Katrina: Xavier and Dillard in New Orleans and Tougaloo on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

According to the Washington Post:

Tens of thousands of evacuees from New Orleans colleges and universities are scattered across the country, trying to figure out how to salvage a school year that started with disaster. Terry Hartle of the American Council on Education estimated that 75,000 to 100,000 college students in the New Orleans metropolitan area have been displaced by the storm and that more than 30 schools in the region have been affected.

More prestigious area schools like Tulane are being helped out by other prestigious schools like Rice in Houston, and they probably have the resource and alumni base to bounce back sooner thanks to their higher status.

Schools like Dillard, Xavier, and Tougaloo play an important role because many of their students are first generation college students who come from families living in areas like the lower-income neighborhoods near the breached levees in New Orleans. Those schools play an important role in breaking the cycle of poverty in which their families have lived. Click here to contribute to UNCF's Katrina Hurricane Relief Fund. You can also distinguish the institution to which to direct the contribution.

09/08/2005, 10:20 p.m. Update: From the Associated Baptist Press:

As of the evening of Sept. 7, [Baylor University] school officials said Baylor had already enrolled 25 undergraduate students from nine institutions in the devastated Gulf region. Those students include eight from the historically African-American Xavier University in New Orleans, as well as six from the city's prestigious Tulane University.

I am pleased to see that my alma mater is doing the right thing.