NEW ORLEANS
In the months after Hurricane Katrina swamped the University of New Orleans campus in August 2005, the basketball team had to practice across the state line in Texas and played its entire season on the road, winning just three games.
Some team members quit, but for those who stuck it out, “it made us closer,” said Jada Frazier, who was a freshman from Albany, Ga.
“I strongly believe that sometimes you have to go through some hardships and changes in order to become a stronger person,” she said. “And I don’t think I could have gone anywhere else and become the person that I am today.”
Frazier is a member of the Class of Katrina — the graduating college seniors who were brand-new freshmen when the hurricane plunged New Orleans into anarchy and ruin four years ago.
While many of their classmates left and never came back, they returned, whether out of loyalty to their school or affection for the city. And for some of them, it was a life-changing experience.
Tulane University student Denali Lander, an English major from Boulder, Colo., helped start a nonprofit relief effort called the NOLA Fund. Originally a source of aid for families displaced by the storm, it evolved into a program providing students at a New Orleans public school with technology training and free laptops.
