Friday, December 09, 2005

Storm Funds

Three junior colleges and a university in Mississippi have received funds from money raised by former Presidents Bush and Clinton to benefit victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Pearl River and Mississippi Gulf Coast community colleges each received $750,000 — the maximum amount a two-year institution could receive — and Jones County Junior College received $400,000.

The University of Southern Mississippi received $1.5 million — the maximum available to four-year institutions. Officials from William Carey College — also a grant recipient — said they were unsure about the exact amount they would receive.

From The Clarion Ledger.

3 comments:

sharon said...

Well, at least this is a start at rebuilding. Though I can't even conceive of how long it will take before those campuses feel like a working college again.

Has anyone heard from the faculty at Pearl River and Mississippi Gulf Coast?

Sharon Gerald said...

I have not heard from anyone at the schools in the harder hit areas. I'm afraid I've been in such a scramble this semester I've hardly looked up. However, I did email a couple of people this morning. I will let you know what I hear back.

Sharon Gerald said...

I'm not sure I've done enough blogging since the hurricane to have much to say about it. I've been pretty overloaded, and it seems more important to get out and help with the clean up than it does to talk about it.

Strangely enough, the technology I think made the most difference in the immediate aftermath was text messaging. I resisted getting a cell phone at all until this past summer. I had only just learned about text messaging right before the storm. Then the phones went out and the cell phone towers went down. All lines of communication were cut off. When they did start getting a few cell phone towers back up, the signals were too weak to get calls through. But we could text message. I found out where most of my friends were and what kind of shape they were in this way.