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October 16, 2007
What's wrong with SUNO?
There was a rally last week to protest the lack of progress in rebuilding SUNO, the historically-black university which was hard hit by the storm. Dillard is back, Xavier is back. SUNO looks, as the cliche goes, "like the storm was yesterday".
I missed the rally, but I took some pictures later that afternoon, and I have nothing but questions and outrage.
Who is in charge of the rebuilding? Where is the money coming from? How much has been spent, and on what? What is the plan?
From what I know about rebuilding, step one is clearing the moldy flooded contents from the building. Before you can muck it out, before you can remove moldy sheetrock and ceiling tiles and ruined fixtures, you have to haul out the furniture, the carpeting, the books, all the stuff that sat in the flood for so many weeks. That's step one.
From what I can tell, at SUNO, they have not done step one yet. Faculty offices:
and libraries:
and classrooms:
look like they have never even been entered. They look no better than the elementary schools in the Lower Ninth Ward, but this is a university.
The only work that seems to have been done is that these giant things that look like ventilation units surround all of the buildings:
They're new, they have stickers indicating installation in May of 2007:
But what purpose do they serve? What good do they do for a building still shoulder-deep in moldy books and furniture? Did rebuilding money go to a big fat contract for somebody to staple expensive ductwork to the outside of ruined buildings?
There is a rat here. I can feel it. There is a reason SUNO students are going to class in trailers, while money goes somewhere else and time ticks away.
An army of volunteers, from ACORN and Common Ground and SUNO students, could at least clear the muck out of these buildings, but even that seems beyond reach, when there is no leadership.
[More pictures in a flickr set here.]
Posted by ray at October 16, 2007 12:13 PM | Permalink
Categories: [katrina | new orleans | politics ]
Comments
Jeezow, that's outrageous.
Posted by: Editor B at October 16, 2007 12:50 PM
The big ventilation things might be dehumidifiers, maybe?
Posted by: rcs at October 16, 2007 2:02 PM
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. But why spend tons of money on super dehumidifiers, when the contents of the building and the moldy sheet root and ceiling tiles have not even been removed? That reeks of either incompetence, or corruption, or both.
Posted by: Ray at October 16, 2007 2:07 PM
They said they were working one building at a time. Considering they were in a low lying area and sustained major damage it seemed reasonable. BUT they haven't even gutted the other building
Unacceptable
Posted by: karen at October 16, 2007 2:17 PM
I don't know if it's a matter of being denied access, or what...but it sure seems that schools at all levels have been the institutions that have the largest "built-in" pool of volunteer laborers available to do the "unskilled" initial work like emptying furniture and gutting.
Posted by: Puddinhead at October 16, 2007 2:45 PM
But why spend tons of money on super dehumidifiers
Ummm.... they're going to wait until the contents have been reduced to a fragile, super-desiccated matrix and then hire some day-laborers to go in there with leafblowers and whooooosh everything into the upper atmosphere.
This presumes that the super dehumidifiers are actually turned on, of course.
Posted by: rcs at October 16, 2007 2:51 PM
When I was there, they weren't. It was silent as a graveyard.
Posted by: Ray at October 16, 2007 2:54 PM
That library just breaks my heart. The whole situation is just awful. If there's a rat, we need to sic Karen's basement snake on it, ASAP.
Posted by: liprap at October 16, 2007 4:45 PM
They didn't get any money from that Clinton-Bush Katrina fund?
Other than LSU & Delgado (is Nunez Community College state funded?), I can't think of other state schools hit as hard as SUNO. Any comparison between these schools' recovery? There's no excuse for neglecting SUNO, but just wondering how state is treating the other schools [they're dragging feet on getting LSU Medicine back together].
Posted by: E.J. at October 16, 2007 5:39 PM
I think the state has a backlog of projects and the FEMA funded ones are very difficult to administer. I understand Facility Planning and Control is short handed and looking for people to manage these projects.
I imagine SUNO got moved to the bottom of the list because it doesn't have the political muscle of some other agencies.
Posted by: mominem at October 16, 2007 8:42 PM
My understanding is that UNO, after waiting for like a year and a half for the state to cut loose some funds to repair damaged and leaking roofs, etc., informed the state that it (UNO) would go ahead and juggle it's budget to use funds already earmarked for other operating expenditures to take care of these "emergency" needs until the additional state funding was available. They were informed that they would do no such thing, and that if they used any money out of their budget to do hurricane repair work that not only would that money not be reimbursed, a total matching it would be deducted from the following year's operating budget. This from the head of one of the departments, who (and which) shall remain unnamed.
I don't know exactly what the state's problem on this spending is...unless there's a faction that's able to delay it until a new administration comes in and the contracts can go to the "proper" firms.
Posted by: Puddinhead at October 17, 2007 6:58 AM
I hear there is a big backlog of projects approved by the legislature which can't be started because there is no one to administer them.
I also hear that if they aren't done according to Federal Rules, they state won't get the money back.
Posted by: mominem at October 17, 2007 2:24 PM
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