Displaced college students switch to local schools

By Bruce A. Scruton - The Times Union

It was a call that was happy and sad; hopeful yet frightening. Gretchen Heiserman managed to get a cell phone signal, if only for a couple of minutes, from the New Orleans Superdome.

"She said, 'Mom, it's like a prison in here!' " said Denise Heiserman, who received the call Thursday morning at her Albany home. "Now I'm really worried."

Gretchen Heiserman, 24, graduated from UAlbany and was just beginning her master's degree studies at the University of New Orleans. Her major: city planning.

Then Hurricane Katrina interrupted her college plans, as they have the plans of thousands of other college students. At least one other student from the Capital Region, Anat Belasen, an incoming freshman at Tulane University, was able to flee before the storm struck.

There have been other students who were accepted to colleges in and around New Orleans who have changed their plans.

Union College has taken in three students who were accepted to the Schenectady school in the spring but opted to go to Tulane instead.

And the University at Albany has opened its doors to two students, one from Tulane and another from Xavier University.

Elsewhere in New York, Syracuse University is temporarily taking in some Tulane students.

After getting the short call from her daughter, Denise Heiserman said she was on the phone most of the day, trying to find someone who might be able to get help for her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend, Mark Graydon.

Graydon was able to borrow a cell phone from a National Guard soldier and got in touch with his mother -- in England. "She called me, too," said Heiserman. "Imagine that, someone in England giving me more information than I'be been able to get from our own government."

Heiserman said she has called Gov. George Pataki's office, but was told to call the Louisiana governor instead.

"The only one who was friendly was Charles Diamond in Congressman McNulty's office," she continued. "But he hasn't been able to get much information."

The daughter, in her call to her mother, said she and her boyfriend were hoping to catch a bus, but were being pushed back by the crush of others in the shelter. "If she could only get to Houston, I've got a friend there who will take them in," said Heiserman.

Anat Belasen's college career at Tulane University lasted for only about a day. The 18-year-old Voorheesville woman and her parents arrived in New Orleans on Thursday. On Saturday morning, she moved into her dorm on Charles Street and Broadway.

"At 1 she had a meeting with the college president and they were ordered to evacuate by 6 p.m.," said her mother, Susan Belasen. "Her father wanted to stay, to see what it's like to go through a hurricane, but she started getting scared so we decided to leave."

Luckily, the family had rented a car when they arrived on Thursday and had filled it with gasoline on Saturday.

Their hotel, the Hilton Garden Inn, about three blocks from the French Quarter, was ordering all guests to leave Sunday morning. "I called and got reservations in Jackson, Tenn., for a motel, so we started driving north," Susan Belasen said.

But going was slow, much of it bumper-to-bumper, according to Alan Belasen, a professor with Empire State College. It took the family until 1 a.m. to make the trip to Memphis. "I figured it out, we averaged 20 miles per hour," he said.

During the day, Susan Belasen had been on the cell phone. "We got the last room in Memphis," she said. "That was closer than going on to Jackson."

Alan Belasen described the others on Interstate 55 as mostly friendly, but at times panicked and at other times a little surly. "People would let others get in front. It was obvious some cars were traveling together and there was sharing of water. But you could also see the look in people's eyes, wondering what they would be able to go back to."

After two nights in Memphis, the family managed to get airline tickets to Charlotte, N.C., and then on to Albany.

Every day, Anat goes online, where Tulane's president is posting news. "He seems optimistic. The dorms and campus aren't flooded. He seems to think the school will reopen in September," said Alan.

On Thursday, Anat was somewhat able to talk. "It makes me worry; about the people; about the city; about myself," she said. "Am I so self-absorbed, worrying about all my clothes in my dorm room where there's people who have lost everything?"