Interview: Dr. Norman Francis, President, Xavier University

From the Special Series "Hurricane Katrina: Views from America's Historically Black Colleges and Universities"

THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Magazine

TBC:  Tell us about the damage Xavier University sustained.

Dr. Francis:  Virtually every building on campus was touched in some way by the flood.  You know, fire will burn a building down, but water will seek its level and touch everything on a specific piece of ground. That’s what happened to us.  We had about seven feet of water on the campus. Several buildings were impacted, particularly the earlier ones, as well as those that were above the ground four or five feet.  Because it was such a long time before we could return to start remediation, even the smallest amount of water in those buildings damaged the floors, and the wall boards started to show mold.  We had to rip up wooden floors, as well as floors that had carpet or other covering.  We did have some roof damage in addition to the flood.  In low-lying buildings, we lost computers and desks.

TBC: Do you have any estimate of the amount of loss?

Dr. Francis:  We don’t have that yet.  Our immediate concern was remediation.  We started by pulling out wet carpet and other things that would exacerbate the problems, things that would increase mold.  We wanted to get things out so that we could start rebuilding as soon as possible.

TBC:  What are your immediate plans to get the University back on its feet?

Dr. Francis:  The most immediate plans are to put back in a service of some kind -- not all of what we may have done in August, because August was the highest enrollment in our history, but services for as many as 2,000 students, half of what we had. We hope to start school in January, roughly January 17.  This task is daunting, but we believe we can do that if the progress we've made thus far keeps on schedule.  In building projects, you can’t have disruptions.  We have started work on priority buildings that can be put back into place, and chosen to take more time for buildings that are not priority.  Some classrooms -- a number of them on second, third and fourth floors -- were not touched, which makes things easier from a teaching standpoint.  There were about three dormitories impacted, one because of roof damage and the other two because their first floors took water.  They will have to be reconstructed, which may take every day of the next two and a half months that we have before reopening.  So, we have every intention of opening in January.  We feel confident that we can do that.  In the College of Pharmacy, the first floor was damaged, but it was the least damaged of all of the buildings on campus.  We think that it surely can be put back into service by January.

TBC:  How has it impacted the faculty?  Are you able to keep them?

Dr. Francis:  That’s the second phase of our priorities.  We know now where most of faculty members are.  We have also started surveying students to ask how many are able and intend to return.  We are committed to keeping all essential faculty and staff that are needed for the reduced student body. This means, in effect, there will be professionals in the faculty and staff areas, and those who worked in other areas will be on a “leave-without-pay” status until we get ready for full service.  We are committed to keeping those persons who will be needed in January on the payroll. Then, of course, we will increase those numbers as greater numbers of students return to campus.

TBC:  How has this interruption impacted this year’s graduating class?

Dr. Francis:  The Pharmacy majors, no impact.  For the seniors in Arts and Sciences, our schedule of classes will be geared to making sure we can offer what they need to graduate.  If we do not have specific courses that a student needs, we already have the commitment from Tulane and Loyola that those students can take courses there at no charge.  They would pay tuition to Xavier and then, for example, if they take three courses at Xavier, they can take the other course at Tulane or Loyola with no extra charge.  That’s a great partnership. We can take comfort in our ability to offer students the classes they need to fulfill their work in this year.  That’s a high priority for us.

TBC:  What are your most pressing needs?

Dr. Francis:  What I need more than anything else, of course, are dollars support—money to cover what I believe, and know, are going to be expenses not covered by insurance or FEMA.  I need to cover, for example, those faculty members and staff that I can’t lose.  You know, when you've got a good team, the way you keep them is to continue to pay them from now until you start back up in January.  That is the support I have been requesting and I am getting some response – though not, of course, to cover the full amount.

The second need is monies to continue to offer scholarship support to bridge the gap between students' needs for matriculation and their resources.  I have requested that the government increase student financial aid substantially. Some students didn’t have enough financial aid in August when they registered, and will now need more because of what Katrina has done to their families.  People have lost jobs and homes—they are going to need more financial support.  But, I know that there are never enough monies awarded to schools and students to cover all their needs.  So, I need additional funds for scholarships to bridge that gap for those good students.  We are seeking funds in the interim for covering faculty; monies to cover the students who are coming back to help them make their tuition payments; monies that we don’t have because we are out of business this year -- to keep us going until we can start up again.

The third need is to secure housing for faculty members who have been displaced and who will back to teach in January.  We hope to have two semesters in the period between January and August.  We will forego a summer program and make it a semester program. The housing stock in New Orleans is not there, so we are trying to develop housing for faculty; and if enrollment is higher than we project, we’ll need housing for students. I should add that in restoring our dormitories, our goal is to put back 1,600 beds; that is our capacity on campus.  In the previous year a number of seniors and juniors had apartments in the city.  Hopefully, some of those [repaired dorm facilities] will be available when they come back, and we can extend housing to New Orleanians who heretofore did not live on-campus, because those students, and many of their families, their homes, may not be ready for six months -- if then.

TBC:  What is your vision for a new Xavier University?

Dr. Francis:  My vision for rebuilding Xavier mirrors what I expect the city to do: to reconstruct it not just as it was, but to be able to improve it without any additional money.  What I mean is that the dollars we would spend can be used to re-equip and re-engineer, if you will, certain facilities in certain ways to better serve students than those that had been damaged.  For just one small example, when I did a CNN interview with Soledad O’Brian, she said, “Oh, I see you have water in the library. You…have to replace those [books]."  I said it would probably cost more to replace them than to buy them on electronic discs, which would improve their use and protect against having to buy another replacement set if water hits them again.  My point is, in everything we do, we would certainly want to maintain the quality of what we had, but also take the opportunity to rethink how things were configured before and whether it could be done better now than in the past.  And, I think that is a challenge facing New Orleans.  Not everything we had was as we would have liked it to be, although we lived with it.  Now, we have an opportunity to step back and say, we took that as given before, but with the same energy, with the same people, and with creativity, we can do better than we were doing before –and we need to.  And that is my vision for Xavier.

This article appears in the October 2005 First Semester Super Issue of THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Magazine [Blackcollegian.com], now celebrating its 35th anniversary of publication and serving the needs of students of color.  The October Super Issue will as always be distributed free at career offices on college campuses nationwide, and include a special section, "Hurricane Katrina: Views from America's Historically Black Colleges and Universities," presented through a special collaboration with Black College Wire [Blackcollegwire.org].