Leaving New Orleans (interesting riff on Liberal failure from a Liberal)

UMass Magazine (Univ, of Mass. at Amherst) ^ | winter 2006 | Boutilier

[pabianice]

An alum bids bittersweet adieu to a troubled city.

By Emily Gold Boutilier '96

Hurricane Katrina wrought billions of dollars’ worth of damage in Lousiana and Mississippi late last summer. New Orleanian Charles Hadley ‘70G was lucky; his house was relatively unscathed. Still, driving daily by the rubble that was once his beautiful home city prompted him to retire early and relocate to Massachusetts. In New Orleans, springtime brings magnolia blossoms and rising temperatures. For Charles Hadley ’70G, this past spring brought thoughts about his future. He was planning to leave the city, this time for good.

New Orleans has been Hadley’s home for 36 years. A native of Westfield, Massachusetts, he arrived as a newly minted PhD and went on to build a life in the Big Easy. At the University of New Orleans (UNO), he worked his way up from assistant professor to chairman of the political science department. He joined a church and a Mardi Gras krewe. He raised his son on jazz and crawfish. Home was in a historic melting-pot district, known as the Irish Channel, close to the Mississippi River.

But after Katrina, everything changed. In early April, seven months after the storm, uncertainty and devastation were the new normal. UNO, faced with decreased enrollment and revenue, was talking about layoffs of tenured faculty. Three young talented professors in his department had already decided to quit. “What we did,” Hadley says, “is lose our future.”

What’s more, he says, racial, political, and economic divisions had only grown starker in the months after Katrina. He wondered: Should he stay and watch New Orleans struggle for years to come? Or was he too old to wait? Would the city ever be the same?

Hadley joined the University of New Orleans, which is part of the state’s public university system, in 1970, just after he finished his studies at UMass Amherst. He taught courses on American politics and published a number of books on Southern and Louisiana politics...

Complete Article

[pabianice]

...In early January, the windows were still broken in Hadley’s office. Looters had targeted the university; among the items stolen was a pocket watch that a student and her parents had given Hadley as a gift. Before Katrina, the University of New Orleans enrolled 17,000 students, making it the largest university in the city. The student body consisted mostly of commuters. Around 12,000 enrolled for the spring semester. In April the university asked its governing board to declare a state of financial emergency that would allow layoffs of tenured professors for the first time in the school’s history. To Hadley, the news was heartbreaking...

The writer completely misses the point: ultra-liberal New Orleans simply collapsed as it waited for Big Government to first save it and then to repair it.

[Red Badger]

He opposes those who argue that the city, because of its geography, should simply fade to black.

[Red Badger]

It will simply fade to blue.............

[gumboyaya]

If and when the streetcars run on St.Charles/Carrolton and Jindal is gov there is still hope.

[RSmithOpt]

All the chocolate melted and 'cause no one wanted to actually plug in the frig, or get the stuff to make more candy. The sack of sugar were too heavy, ya know.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Massachusetts?

[HIDEK6]

...and all this because a weakening category 4 hurricane had the misfortune to come ashore in a locale where the Democrats had been responsible for levee maintenance since Rover was a pup.

[daviddennis]

Well, in his case as a government employee I would say he wouldn't have much choice but to wait for government to fix the problem.

I think I would have stuck it out. I can't stand the cold, so better a destroyed New Orleans than a non-destroyed Massachusetts.

At least that's how I think :-).

D