THE INSTITUTION OF JANRY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 3, 2009
NEWS
5A
WEDNESDAY. SEPTEMBER 3. 2008
ASSOCIATED PRESS
An unidentified man walks across a section of road and railroad tracks that washed out as a result of Hurricane Gustav at the Industrial Canal in New Orleans. Drinking water continued to flow in the city and the pumps that keep it dry never shut down — two critical service failings that contributed to Katrina's toll.
HURRICANE GUSTAV
New Orleans evacuees eager to return home after storm
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW ORLEANS — The road back home for the estimated 2 million Hurricane Gustav evacuees was slow going Tuesday, as those trying to filter into the coast were greeted by police checkpoints and National Guardsmen who told them it was still too dangerous to return.
Though the storm largely spared New Orleans and Louisiana, hardhit neighborhoods still had no power, and roads were blocked by trees. With only a handful of communities allowing re-entry, thousands grew frustrated in shelters, sitting on uncomfortable cots and wondering why the buses wouldn't come and drive them back.
"It's frustrating. I'm ready to go now," said Denise Preston, who was rushed to a hospital with a fever. She was with her infant son, who was born only a week ago. "They haven't said too much on the news about what's happened in my town."
A day after the city's improved levee system kept the streets dry as a disorganized and weakened Gustav passed overhead, there was quiet pride in a historic evacuation of nearly 2 million people. Only eight deaths were attributed to the storm in the U.S. The toll from Katrina three years ago exceeded 1,600.
"The reasons you're not seeing dramatic stories of rescue is because we had a successful evacuation," said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. "The only reason we don't have more tales of people in grave danger is because everyone heeded ... the instructions to get out of town."
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said it would be at least Thursday before the city reopened, and people would come back in waves: critical employees and businesses first, then residents.
Gustav is no longer a hurricane, but is still an ugly storm that's expected to dump several inches of rain in northern Louisiana and east Texas. Gov. Bobby Jindal said Louisiana was only at the halftime" and was worried the damage from rain could exceed Gustav's pounding of the coast.
"This is a serious storm that has caused serious damage in our state," Jindal said. "We're pleased we have not seen major flooding in New Orleans and places that flooded before, but we are facing major challenges in other parts our state."
In Mississippi, where sections of the Gulf Coast were still isolated by flood waters, Gov. Haley Barbour urged residents not to return to their homes until Wednesday.
John Furey, 65, of Pearlington, sat at an island in the flooded kitchen of his 70-year-old brother Pat's home. Both were still working to repair damage from Katrina when Gustav arrived — the only two floods to hit John's red brick
home since 1964.
"This is the second time in three years," Furey said. "I just settled with State Farm in March."
The Census Bureau said that Gustav had affected 2.1 million people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, and there was significant cleanup. Dickey Arnold, 57, rode out the storm with his wife and granddaughter in Franklin, 100 miles to the east of New Orleans. The owner of a residential glass business said he didn't see much work ahead, finding few homes with broken windows or structural damage after driving through town.
"That's mostly what I see when I went riding around town: tree damage, so thank God for that," he said.
Jindal said there were 11,000
crewmen working on bringing back power to Louisiana, where the storm mostly damaged transmission lines.
The New Orleans sewer system was damaged. Drinking water continued to flow in the city and the pumps that keep it dry never shut down - two critical service failings that contributed to Katrina's toll.
Nagin took pride in a massive evacuation effort that succeeded in urging people to leave or catch buses and trains out. Only about 10,000 people rode out the storm in New Orleans.
"I would not do a thing differently," Nagin said. "I'd probably call Gustav, instead of the mother of all storms, maybe the mother-in-law or the ugly sister of all storms."
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New legislation intended to simplify the financial aid application process could mean a revised FAFSA application form for some KU students — but it won't be soon, it won't be widely available, and it may not even be simple.
T h e 1,200 - page H i g h e r Education Act authorization bill, recently signed into law by President Bush, included a provision for the "EZ FAFSA," modeled after simplified versions of the IRS' 1990
ANNETTE CALDWELI SIMMONS
SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
& HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
FINANCIAL AID
The form will be shorter, but possibly still complicated
Critics question benefits of revised FAFSA application
1040 income tax form.
The current FAFSA, or Free Application for Federal Student Aid, is five pages long and deals mostly with the income of the applicant or the applicant's family.
Todd Cohen, director of University Relations, said the form's length might have had an intimidating effect on lower-income and first-generation students. He said he could empathize with the anxiety caused by the form's complexity.
would be as confusing as the FAFSA itself.
According to Christina Satkowski and Stephen Burd of the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan public policy think tank and media watchdog, the very process of determining eligibility for the EZ FAFSA is too complex.
CHRISTINA SATKOWSKI New America Foundation
"My concern is that, while well-intentioned, it's going to create more, rather than less, complexity for low-income students."
In an article recently published
"It's comparable to filling out tax forms," Cohen said. "You don't want to miss out on something just by virtue of a simple clerical error."
Though the proposed revised form would be three pages shorter, critics of the proposal said the legislation's approach was doomed from the outset because determining whether someone was eligible to use the EZ FAFSA
on NAF's Web site, Satkowski and Burd said eligibility would be reserved for students "whose families earn less than $50,000 a year and either are not
required to file the long version of the 1040 federal income tax return or receive certain meantested benefits such as welfare payments or food stamps."
Satkowski, a research associate with NAF, agreed that finding ways to simplify the FAFSA
According to Cohen, 24.3 percent of the University's
was important.
She said many applicants were not aware which version of the 1040 they were eligible to use.
"You don't want to miss out on something just by virtue of a simple clerical error."
"If it's difficult to figure out whether to use the 1040A or 1040EZ, it's going to be just as difficult to figure out if you're eligible for the EZ FAFSA," Asher said. "Why not simplify the process by using IRS info to prepopulate the FAFSA? They're basically asking you to tell them everything you've already told the IRS anyway."
said though knowledge of IRS forms might be the Achilles heel of the EZ FAFSA concept, the IRS could offer a solution.
It will likely be several years before college students see the new form. According to Asher, now that the bill has been signed into law, the U.S. Department of Education must determine how to implement its regulations. This process will include holding public hearings on the legislation in three locations around the U.S., gathering public input, appointing a negotiation committee and reconciling any disagreements that may arise. Further, the language in the Act indicates that the EZ FAFSA would be implemented only "after appropriate field testing” is complete, making a timeline for the new financial aid application process even more speculative.
TODD COHEN Director of University Relations
5,474 incoming freshmen in Fall 2007 were from families that reported $50,000 or less in adjusted gross income.
Lauren Asher, vice president of the Institute for College Access and Success in Berkeley, Calif.
"M y concern," Satkowski
said, "is that while well-intentioned, it's going to create more, rather than less, complexity for low-income students."
- Edited by Mary Sorrick