The head of the Centre for the Study of Public Policy at the University of Aberdeen addressed Tulane about the difficulties involved in establishing a democracy.

to students and professors at 5 p.m. Wednesday in Norman Mayer.

Professor Rose is the director of the Centre for the Study of Public Policy at the University of Aberdeen and the author of numerous books, including “Understanding Post-Communist Transformation: A Bottom Up Approach and Parties and Elections in New European Democracies.”

Professor Tony Pereira, chair of Tulane’s political science department, and Professor Raymond Taras of the political science department were involved in organizing the lecture.

Professor Pereira said he was very pleased that Rose agreed to give a lecture at Tulane.

“When I found out he was coming here, I wanted to invite him to speak,” Pereira said.

In his lecture, Rose talked about the requirements for a state and the challenges that Iraq and Afghanistan face.

“A state is something that has defined boundaries, something that Afghanistan and Iraq ultimately lack,” Rose said. “If you don’t have a state, what are you trying to democratize?”

Rose drew a distinction when it came to Afghanistan, however.

“Because, in part, of its indeterminate boundaries with Pakistan, there’s no state there [to democratize],” Rose said.
Pereira said that he hoped that Rose’s lecture taught students more about what a true democracy is.

“This lecture was an antidote to the idea that it is very easy to spread democracy,” Pereira said. “Students must not confuse elections with democracy. We value elections as part of our democratic tradition, but you can have elections without democracy.”

Taras said he hoped that the lecture helped students learn how to think about politics and the world.

“The purpose is for students to revel in critical thought,” Taras said. “It’s not about learning about Russia or England or Iraq — it’s to follow the critical process.”

When talking about the criteria for a democracy, Rose emphasized the need for free competition for offices and said that in a democracy “losers can fight back, and winners have constraints on their power.”

Rose also said that universal suffrage was absolutely necessary to prevent a country from simply becoming a “constitutional oligarchy.”

In his lecture, Rose also addressed the state of the world’s economy.

“Can a government go bankrupt?” Rose said. “The bad news is that they can’t; they just keep refinancing.”

In the question and answer session following the lecture, an audience member asked Rose if he believes if it is possible for Iraq and Afghanistan to become functional democracies.

“In Iraq, Saddam [Hussein’s regime] was a functional totalitarian regime,” Rose said. “You want to take the totalitarian, but leave the functional regime.”

Political consultant James Carville helped bring together many of the participants.

Members of both the Democratic and Republican parties will take part in four panels over the course of the summit, including What’s Fair in Politics?, Assessing the Obama Presidency, Looking Ahead to 2010 and 2012, and The Role of the Media in Elections.

Eileen McMenamin, vice president of communications at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said the summit serves as an opportunity to encourage thoughtful discourse and promote principled compromise.

“There is a lot of discussion going on in Washington and around the country right now about the politics of polarization,” McMenamin said. “We see this as an opportunity to have a discussion with the political consultants who are on the front lines of the public debate in American politics. Our message is you can disagree without being disagreeable.”

Participants from the Republican party will include Charlie Black, a campaign adviser to John McCain, Washington Times columnist Tony Blankley and Alex Castellanos, a top media adviser for the 2004 Bush campaign.

Participants from the Democratic party will include Stanley Greenberg, a campaign adviser for Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry and Tony Blair; and Larry Grisolano, a senior communication strategist for the Obama presidential campaign.

Additionally, political science professors Nancy Maveety, Celeste Lay and Brian Brox will participate in the summit. Political power couple Democrat James Carville and Republican Mary Matalin will serve as honorary co-chairs and Big Easy hosts.

Political science department chair Anthony Pereira said the summit will spark discourse between politicians and professors.

“These events positively affect Tulane University because they bridge the divide between academia and politics, allowing people on each side to better understand the other,” Pereira said.

Tulane Director of Public Relations Michael Strecker said the summit is a unique event that students and the New Orleans community should take advantage of.

“I think it’s a great opportunity for the Tulane community,” he said. “This is the only summit held in the country of this type, and if you look at the names and positions of the people it’s really impressive. It’s a great chance to learn about how politics works and how it could work better.”

McMenamin said Tulane serves as a perfect location for the summit, and the presence of James Carville and Mary Matalin greatly influenced the Bipartisan Policy Center.

“Our thinking in planning this summit was that we wanted to get the participants out of Washington, in the hopes that they would feel less constrained and could talk more openly about what they see as the problems and potential solutions to these issues,” McMenamin said. “James Carville, who teaches at Tulane, and Mary Matalin offered to serve as our Big Easy hosts, so it was the perfect opportunity to come to Tulane University. They are the living example of being able to rise above partisanship.”

The first panel will take place at 2:45 p.m. Monday in the Lavin-Bernick Center. Following the summit, participants will attend a Wii competition charity event with local children to benefit the Devlin S-AFE Center at 12:15 p.m. Tuesday.

Three Tulane students will travel to New York to pitch their proposal to sell organic tea.

The Movers and Changers Challenge involves planning a business that benefits the community or the world while remaining profitable and sustainable, a business model often referred to as social entrepreneurship. The winning team will win $25,000 to help start its business.

The team — headed by founder and CEO Jay Zhao; Kathryne Shelton, vice president of social causes and relations; and Nic LaGatta, vice president of business operations and distribution — won $5,000 and free trips to New York to take part in a global entrepreneurship event.

“I’m excited to go to New York for the first time and I’m happy to represent New Orleans and my school,” LaGatta said.
The name of the team’s planned business is Silk Road Trading. The company will buy tea grown in China and pay growers fair trade prices. The tea will not be processed in factories; rather, it will be dried and prepared traditionally, organically and in an environmentally-friendly way.

“The idea for our company is to sell good tea for a good cause,” Zhao said. “Kathryne Shelton works with the good cause and Nic LaGatta works with the good tea aspect.”

The tea will be transported from China via air or sea. The plan is to start selling the tea on campus and at local stores, and then in a larger area of New Orleans and eventually the Gulf Coast. LaGatta said that they will probably start distributing from a pick-up truck until they can hire a logistics and distribution service.

“We hope to get an account with a supermarket or a tea broker or another company to help get the product out there,” LaGatta said.

The tea’s working name is Wet Tea because the team will use part of the profits to educate about wetland recession. Silk Road Trading plans to plant cypress trees in the wetlands. The team wants to get schools involved in programs similar to those of Bayou Rebirth, a non-profit which takes volunteers to the wetlands to educate them about wetland recession and to get them involved in reducing it by taking part in activities like planting trees provided by sponsors like Silk Road Trading.

“We want this concept to be sustainable. We want to show that it’s possible to be for-profit but also be social entrepreneurs. Our idea is to live in and be very conscious of the community while trying to help it,” Shelton said.

LaGatta described the philosophy behind Silk Road Trading and its Wet Tea product.

“What if a person can go into a store and vote for a cause with their purchases?” LaGatta said. We’d like to give people a chance to do good with the products they buy. Just because a business isn’t selfless doesn’t mean it has to be selfish.”

Executive officers from both organizations said they hope the organization will provide a unified voice for college students in New Orleans while fostering unity between the student bodies at the two schools.

“Post-secondary education is the second largest employer in New Orleans after tourism,” USG Vice President for Finance Parker Smith said. “What we have to say may carry some weight.”

Student government leaders said they think the organization has the potential to give students a larger voice in the city.

“The idea of partnering with Tulane came about when Parker Smith and I were talking about our student governments during the summer,” Loyola SGA President Sarah Cooper said. “We realized that our student governments cannot resolve certain issues on their own. We talked about problems that both of our universities come across and decided that both universities should be proactive in solving these issues.”

The organization is in the process of forming a constitution. Once a stable foundation is in place, organizers said they hope to extend membership to other schools in the city.

“The ICC existed pre-Katrina,” said David Gray, Tulane USG vice president for student organizations. “The original ICC was for Tulane, Loyola, Xavier and Dillard. We hope to get back to that by May 2010.”

Smith said he wants to ensure the organization is stable before inviting other schools to join.

“It’s easier to start small and build,” Smith said. “We really share a lot in common with Loyola.”

The two schools are currently working to resolve several issues concerning both campuses, including dining, safety on and around campus, and parking.

“Since we have met, we realize that both campuses go through the same struggles and both campuses have resources that can be shared,” Cooper said. “We want to be able to come to the ICC with our problems and sort them out and bounce ideas off one another to better our campuses.”

Many of the issues regarding dining revolved around capacity. Due to the efforts of the student governments, Loyola students will now be able to use meal plan swipes at Bruff Commons. Tulane students will continue to be allowed to use Bruff swipes at Loyola’s Orleans Room.

“We want students to know we hear their concerns,” Gray said. “The perception around Tulane is the OR has better food than Bruff, even though they both use the same provider.”

The two schools hope dining services works as a starting point to address other issues.

Students on the committee have said that they are happy with the compromises and discussions they have had with administrators thus far.

Graduate and Professional Student Association President George Wendt said that discussions with administrators have gone more smoothly than he had expected.

“I thought today [Monday] would be, students come from one perspective and administrators come from another, and we just clash,” Wendt said. “Both sides were willing to listen to the other, and that’s really good. We were able to find some compromises on some issues. If this continues, I think we’re off to a good start.”

The committee, however, will discuss one of the most contentious issues, the level of evidence that the code will use, during its next meeting Nov. 12.

Associate Vice President for Student Affairs Kevin Bailey said that while administrators on the committee generally support a change to a lower level of evidence — from “clear and convincing” to “preponderance” — most students oppose it.

“We’re not set up as a system to be able to meet the clear-and-convincing standard, so we can’t subpoena folks externally, we can’t compel testimony — we don’t have a thorough investigative process,” Bailey said.

USG President Donald “Ratchet” Leverson said that he is still on the fence about the level of evidence of the new code.
“We don’t want people to be in trouble and have to leave Tulane, but we want this campus to be safe and for people to have consequences for their actions,” Leverson said.

If the committee adopts preponderance of evidence, Wendt said it needs to make several other changes to the code to adapt to the new level of evidence. For example, Wendt said that the code should offer more options for student mediation, where a student mediator and administrator discuss the evidence with the accused student and develop a punishment, instead of attending hearings.

“The goal cannot be to solely punish,” Wendt said. “It has to be important to the student. It has to be so that he or she gets on the right path.”

Wendt said he would consider supporting a lower standard of evidence for crimes like sexual assault which are difficult to prove.

“I think when you’re talking about those things, I think it’s fair to say, maybe 51 percent [the level to necessary to convict under preponderance of evidence] is enough,” Wendt said. “I’m not sure the same argument can’t be used for hazing. That’s tough to prove. You have a lot of loyal people who aren’t willing to discuss it.”

Bailey, however, said that the code should adopt a policy in which the same level of evidence applies to all offenses.
“It’s a slippery slope,” Bailey said. “If you separate violations by standard I think that puts us in more hot water with the students.”

Associated Student Body President Tim Clinton said that he would like to see clear and convincing evidence apply to drug and alcohol-related offenses, but a lower level of evidence apply to sexual assault cases. Since the administration said it would like all cases to use the same level of evidence, Clinton said he would propose a completely separate policy for sexual assault cases if necessary.

“I personally am not in favor of preponderance except in sexual harassment cases,” Clinton said.

Though GAPSA members comprise of a quarter of the student representation of the Student Affairs Committee, the code will mainly affect undergraduate students. Wendt said that he was skeptical about USG and GAPSA forming a solid relationship at the beginning of the year, but the two organizations have turned a corner this semester.

“I think that, to be frank, I’m doing this mainly for USG,” Wendt said. “They need to have protections, and they need to have built-in student rights.”

Clinton said that support from GAPSA has been helpful.

“I think this is the first time we’ve worked together on a serious issue where everyone’s on the same page and working toward the same goal,” Clinton said.

Though Wendt said he’s optimistic for now, he said he is less optimistic than some of his peers. He said the current cooperation between administrators and students will have been for naught if they cannot agree on the issue of the level of evidence.

“I think they think we’re all going to just walk in and we’re just all going to hold hands and sing ‘Kumbaya’ and convince them,” Wendt said. “I’m not that optimistic. I think we’re going to have to discuss it, and we’re going to have to try to come to some sort of agreement.”

Student and ownership settle dispute after last week’s incident.

Shortly after the incident, another Tulane student created a Facebook group entitled “Boycott Café Prytania.” This group drew much ire from both supporters of Café Prytania, and students present at the event. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Human Rights Campaign were contacted and determined that the occurrence was an isolated incident. Both organizations declared that the incident was in no way a reflection of Café Prytania’s policies or management.

Local musician Jesse Moore, a frequent performer at Café Prytania, posted on the Facebook page in support of the bar.

“If the boycott were really successful, it might eliminate Café Prytania as a music venue all together, which is one less place musicians can make a living in New Orleans,” Moore said.

According to Comboy, Café Prytania intends to hold a diversity training for all employees headed by a member of the Human Rights Campaign to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future. Unspecified actions have been taken to deal with the employee, who acted of his own accord.

Café Prytania was unable to comment on the specifics of the incident. However, manager Mike Twill said that they are not taking the issue lightly.

“Tolerance and diversity are fixtures of the culture at Café Prytania, and the ownership is taking care that all parties are treated with dignity and respect,” Twill said.

The Facebook page calling for the boycott has since been renamed “Let’s Work Together to End Discrimination Against Gays.” Its creator called on the group’s members to accept Café Prytania’s apology and “join them in a dialogue of acceptance.”

Students said the Day of the Dead altar could help them learn about Mexico’s culture

The exhibit, which runs through Nov. 7, features 40 photographs of 10 different Mexican UNESCO world heritage sites and a Day of the Dead altar created by artist Cynthia Ramirez. The altar features skulls, flowers and memorabilia in honor of Jeffery Cook, a local artist who died earlier this year.

Ramirez has been constructing altars to honor deceased relatives and friends for the Day of the Dead for several years, but this exhibition is the first time one was featured with the UNESCO photographs.

The Consulate of Mexico coordinated with UNESCO to bring the photographs, which display cultural and traditional aspects of Mexican cities like Mexico City, Oaxaca and Campeche. The images include cathedrals, monuments, girls dancing in traditional Indian costumes, food and landscapes.

Alexandra Kleinschmidt of the consulate of Mexico hopes that the event will help people gain more awareness of Mexican culture.

“They usually show the sunny beaches, the tequila and the fun. They don’t think about our cultural heritage… we just want people to get to know our culture a little better,” Kleinschmidt said.

Sophomore Amelia Dial said she was interested in the exhibit because she grew up around Mexican-American culture in New Mexico.

“I think the Day of the Dead celebrations fit in well with New Orleans’ festive attitude toward the afterlife.”

The exhibit is part of a two-week long Mexican cultural celebration. The Mexican consulate is also preparing for next year’s the bicentennial to commemorate 200 years of Mexican independence.

The organizations are leading a week of programming that they hope will bring awareness to the many issues that fall under the umbrella of human trafficking and get students involved.

“I want people to be upset,” said Lauren Pyle, vice chair for CACTUS who is responsible for the programming this week. “Not just upset, people should be outraged into action.”

As part of the week’s events, students attended a special screening of “Call and Response” Wednesday night in McAlister Auditorium. The documentary brings together popular musicians and human trafficking scholars to raise further awareness about the cause. Afterward, a panel of experts discussed the issues facing the modern-day abolitionist movement and answered students’ questions about how they can get involved.

Tulane alumnus Hamilton Simmons-Jones served on the panel.

“The most important thing is that you take action,” Hamilton said. “Don’t worry about not knowing enough.”

Freshman Michael Algu stayed in McAlister Auditorium to send letters to congressmen and various popular companies whose workers endure slave-like conditions in their factories.
“I had no idea this was still going on,” Algu said. “This has opened my eyes to take action in whatever way I can.”

The week’s events will continue with a volunteer charity carwash this Saturday at Green Acres Auto Repair in Metairie and a screening of the documentary, “Invisible Children” Monday in McAlister Auditorium.

“The proceeds will be going to the Metro Women’s Shelter here in New Orleans,” said Matt Degier, co-chair of religious life for the Chi Alpha Christian fellowship, which organized the car wash. “They help women either at risk or who have already ended up in the streets.”

Claire Galley arranged the “Invisible Children” screening that will take place Monday. She hopes students will continue to support the movement.

“You can support bills in the Senate, fundraise on a local level, and start petitions to send to senators and companies,” Galley said.

Pyle said that at the very least, students need to begin talking about human trafficking.

“There is slavery in our world today… and it’s mind-blowing that no one is talking about it,” Pyle said. “You can do something. This is going to be stopped by our generation.”

“The line is based on the idea that being able to contact and talk with a peer is comforting,” REACH president Reese Zarreii said.

REACH previously operated in conjunction with the Educational Resource Center, which offered advice and support from clinical counselors.

“REACH is here to provide support and resources and educate the Tulane community about sexual assaults,” Zarreii said. “We have a table at Take Back the Night, we distribute magnets with important numbers and we have a poster campaign.”

In late September REACH learned that they were being moved to the Office of Violence Prevention. Administrators also told REACH that their crisis hotline might be cancelled. Group members were concerned that there was no student input involved in the decision.
“There was not as much student involvement as there should have been,” Assistant Dean of Students Erica Woodley said. “But we need to get past that.”

Originally, administrators at the Office of Violence Prevention said that the phone would remain on until at least the end of the semester.

Though Woodley said Wednesday that administrators were not planning to eliminate the phone, REACH learned Thursday that the phone line would be temporarily suspended.
“Information came to light that the phone is not being properly maintained,” said Allen Thomas, coordinator of violence prevention and support services, on Thursday. “We need to make sure that members are not responsible for the phone for an inordinately long time. Phone records also need to be turned in a timely fashion, and they haven’t been contacting their clinical adviser when they should have been.”

This protocol failure and the general confusion about the future of the phone convinced university administrators, including Allen, ERC Executive Director Jill Rovaris and REACH adviser Shawna Foose, that a suspension was required, Allen said.

“I’m disappointed,” Allen said. “This doesn’t mean the phone is going away forever, just that we need time to regroup, do some training and get to the point where administrators feel comfortable.”

REACH leaders said that having a peer-run crisis hotline was essential on a college campus.

“Right now there are no peer advisers answering the phone,” Zarreii said. “There have been issues that might impact our ability to do peer response, but we believe that having us as an option is extremely important.”

Administrators and REACH leaders will be meeting in the coming weeks to determine the future of the phone line.

“Anyone, no matter who they are, needs a place where they feel comfortable reporting,” Woodley said. “But lots of people need to be comfortable with this, including the students answering the phones, advisers and various levels of the university.”

European Union signs agreement
The Czech Republic joined the other members of the European Union in signing the Treaty of Lisbon Tuesday. The treaty required unanimous ratification by the EU. The Czech Republic was the last EU nation to sign the agreement. The treaty will create a presidential position and a new proportional voting system to reflect countries’ populations. Additionally, the treaty invests more power in the European Parliament and lessens the ability of a country to block proposals.

Five British soldiers killed by Afghan policeman
An Afghan policeman shot and killed five British soldiers with whom he was working. The attack took place Tuesday at a time when British public support for the war is waning. Recent polls in Britain indicate that less than 20 percent of the British public support the country’s role in the war.

The United Nations debates report on Gaza
The United Nations General Assembly began debate Wednesday on a draft resolution that would call for Israel and Palestinians to investigate accusations of war crimes during the conflict in Gaza late last year. The non-binding resolution would call for investigations to take place during the next three months. Though the resolution is expected to pass the General Assembly, the United States is likly to veto any such resolution in the United Nations Security Council, where it would be binding.

Enjoy a concert by the Grammy Award-winning Roots, an alternative Hip Hop band from Philadelphia that creates a jazzy flair using living instruments. The Roots are currently the house band on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Public tickets are $25.00. Call 800-594-TIXX. Student tickets are $15 and are available on campus. Backpacks, alcohol and drugs are not permitted. The event anyone either older than 18 or accompanied by an adult.

BIPARTISAN POLICY CENTER SUMMIT
MONDAY AND TUESDAY
MONDAY: 2:30 - 5 P.M TUESDAY: 9:30 A.M.- 2 P.M.
LAVIN-BERNICK CENTER (LBC), KENDALL CRAM ROOM

Join the Bipartisan Policy Center at Tulane University for its Inaugural Political Summit Nov. 9 - 10. Listen as some of the nation’s top political thinkers discuss how to restore civility to politics.

NEWCOMB AND THE SORORITIES: ANNUAL FALL RECEPTION
WEDNESDAY
4 - 5:30 P.M.
NEWCOMB COLLEGE INSTITUTE

If you’re interested in joining a sorority or just interested in the history of sorority life at Newcomb and Tulane, attend this event. Light refreshments will be served.

HEALTH CARE FORUM 2009
THURSDAY
7:00 P.M.
1440 CANAL STREET, TIDEWATER BUILDING DIBOLL AUDITORIUM (DOWNTOWN CAMPUS)

Come to this forum discussing the impact of National Health Care Reform on New Orleans. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. A networking reception will immediately follow this event.

A Thanksgiving Food Drive is also being held. If you would like to participate, canned goods and monetary donations will be collected at this event.

While on patrol, a Tulane University police officer smelled marijuana coming from a car with open doors and windows parked in Diboll Complex. The officer told the two students who exited the car that they were under investigation and read them their rights. He then searched the car and found a small amount of marijuana on the front seat and in the glove compartment. He also found two grinders, rolling papers and two glass pipes. The students said they had been smoking in car on the way back from Voodoo Fest. They were arrested and taken to Central Lockup.

Construction signs stolen

Seven signs were stolen from the McAlister Drive construction site Sunday morning. Four “no cycling” signs, two “dismount and unload” signs and a “sidewalk closed ahead” sign were stolen. Officers recovered an abandoned sign near Phelps Hall and stored it for safekeeping. Police have no leads.

Student assaulted at bar

A student told police that a bouncer assaulted him around 4 a.m. last Friday. The student said that the bouncer grabbed him and pulled him from the bar and punched him multiple times in the face and chest. TUPD called Tulane Emergency Medical Services after the student was unable to recite his social security number and was slurring his speech. He was brought to Oschner Baptist for treatment.

Toys stolen from Newcomb Childcare

Staff members at the Newcomb Childcare Center told police that two children’s riding toys were stolen from the fenced in play area Wednesday night. A red and blue water table was also destroyed. The toys are valued at more than $450.

The 1,500 vaccines arrived Thursday and were distributed to three city clinics. City officials said the vaccines will run out within days, but new shipments are expected. More than 2,000 H1N1 doses had previously been administered to local children and pregnant women.

Tulane plastic surgeon murdered

Dr. Ralph Newsome was stabbed early Sunday morning in his French Quarter home. Newsome, who worked at Tulane Medical Center, generally dealt with trauma victims and skin cancer patients. There are no suspects in the murder though New Orleans Police Department officers are pursuing a number of leads.

City crime rate drops

Third-quarter crime rates continued their steady yearlong drop. Though burglaries, auto thefts, armed robberies and assaults all dropped, the murder rate remained the same and rapes increased significantly. NOPD attributed the drop to new required 12-hour shifts and an increased arrest rate.

Construction begins on West Bank flood barrier

The Army Corps of Engineers broke ground last week on a floodgate and pump system designed to close off West Bank canals and strengthen levees during future storms. The project, which will cost more than $1 billion, is designed to protect the more than 250,000 residents living on the West Bank.

When mental illnesses prevent students from performing to their academic potential, their academic advisors, along with student affairs and the Student Health Center, can recommend that students drop classes. In cases in which schoolwork and classes prevent students from receiving the treatment they need, students can request complete medical withdrawal and leave Tulane until they’ve received the proper treatment. Grades for the semester are not recorded and are not counted as withdrawals. Last year, about 72 students completely withdrew, which is a relatively small number. Associate Dean Andrew Martinez said he is seeing a similar trend this year.

National Public Radio recently reported that the Healthy Minds Study found an increase in the number of students seeking help for mental illnesses at universities across the country. Associate Dean Erica Woodley said she has noticed an increase in the number of students who are seeking help for mental illnesses.

“That’s why my position was created,” Woodley said. “Because of an increase in student problems overall, but [part of that] is mental illnesses.”

If more students are coming forward with mental illnesses, more students are receiving treatment, Martinez said.

“I think people are maybe a little more willing to come forward,” Martinez said. “And we want them to. We’re trying to reach out to them, so if we are seeing more, it’s a credit to us actually catching more.”

Martinez said that though he cannot tell if there has been a constant increase in the number of students receiving help for mental health issues, a spike occurred following Hurricane Katrina.

“That was hard on the students, the faculty were depressed and upset, the city was troubled, and students reacted to this,” Martinez said.

Randall Graf, associate advocate of the SHC, also said he noticed an increase in the number of students seeking help after Katrina.

“People had seen a lot of things they hadn’t necessarily wanted or needed to see,” Graf said. “So I think we probably had a much higher percentage of folks taking medical accommodations and withdrawals back then.”

Before Katrina, the individual schools dealt with medical withdrawal. Afterward, when all of the separate schools combined into Newcomb-Tulane, the university changed its system regarding complete medical withdrawal.

“We were concerned that there was a possibility, and in fact, almost a tendency, for students to get lost in the shuffle, particularly during the situation immediately following Katrina,” Martinez said. “We were worried that students with serious health issues were not able to deal with them effectively the way things were going.”
Students used to have to plead their cases for medical withdrawal to individual physicians and academic deans.

“Certain doctors might be more willing, and certain ones might be less willing, so it was kind of luck of the draw,” Graf said.

The Student Health Center used to flood with mental health cases and pleas for medical withdrawal before final exams.

“There was a peak demand that occurred generally toward the very end of the semester, and what happened was it’s not that they were undermanned; it’s that the demand was unnaturally high during that time,” Martinez said. “Frankly, it was due to what we were doing, sending people there. We [academic advising] were referring an awful lot of people all at the same period of time.”

To ensure that students who may be suffering did not go unnoticed and did not overwhelm the student health center, academic advising began reaching out to students whose grades were suffering throughout the semester, Martinez said.
“Let’s say this semester you got an ‘F,’” Martinez said. “Your adviser’s going to contact you and say ‘Hey, is everything ok?’ This is the kind of thing we want to do to proactively deal with. Don’t just wait until it explodes. That’s the key.”

In most cases, Graf said that students, the health center and the academic deans are in agreement that withdrawal is the best option.

“The ideal scenario is you’re working with your provider as a patient, and you reach some conclusions that everybody agrees are best for you and that we’re all on the same page, the same side,” Graf said.

Though a system exists that forces a student to leave campus for medical reasons, Tulane hasn’t seen a case like that for several years, Martinez said.

“That doesn’t mean that they didn’t put up a fight sometimes,” Martinez said. “When they finally dispassionately look at it, and their parents talk to them and realize how things are, they generally [agree].”

Students often realize they need to leave because their illness is hurting their academics, Woodley said.

“Most students want the medical withdrawal,” Woodley said. “They know they need help.”

Students, however, have to make this important decision at a difficult time, Martinez said. Also, students who are hospitalized or receiving treatment may not be able to communicate, and so parents may have to step in.

“That’s part of the problem, is that the people who are more likely to make the right decisions are not the ones who are most likely to be found in this situation,” Martinez said.

Though it is possible that students may abuse the system as an excuse to leave school or drop a few classes, Graf said that he usually adheres to students’ requests.
“I would rather give them the benefit of the doubt because to come back to school, they have to show me they did something to treat the reason they left for,” Graf said. “Then they get caught in a catch-22 because if they’re faking it, now they have to go to the community back home and get fake treatment for something fake. It gets to be really hard.”

Martinez also said the system has recently made it more difficult for students to return to school before receiving adequate treatment.

“What we found was that there were occasions where people were coming back too soon,” Martinez said. “They hadn’t had adequate time to do what they needed to do, so they’ve heightened the awareness of that. We’ve instituted blocks on occasion of students to make sure they in fact get the health care that they need.”

Graf said that the student health center will work with academic advising and student affairs to continue tweaking the process.

“We’re learning as we go that we want to make sure there are no snags along the way, because if there’s a snag the student suffers, not us,” Graf said. “We keep coming to work everyday and Tulane keeps giving us a paycheck, but if there’s a snag that gets in the way of a student being able to return or being able to leave or being able to get the benefit of the doubt, that’s crummy for students, and we don’t want to be in that position.”