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Is Campus IT Ready for Rita?
9/21/2005
But it’s not just Galveston that’s affected by Rita, there are other Texas towns on the coast – like Corpus Christi, with its Texas A&M branch campus there, and even Houston institutions, although they’re inland, are going to feel this one.
However, it’s not likely that a repeat of the slow onset of hugely widespread flooding will occur in Texas, because the geography d'es not match that in the New Orleans area. Barring unforeseen circumstances, the Texas institutions will prepare, evacuate, and then be able to return and be functioning fairly soon. If any have to close for an entire semester, like all of those in the New Orleans area have, it will be a real surprise.
At Texas A&M Corpus Christi, the “Island University,” classes are cancelled after Wednesday, but with the expectation that they will resume on Monday. All students are to be off the island by 10 am Thursday. All the Texas institutions seem to have already made plans for their websites to be mirrored in safer places and have staff moved into place to maintain their sites in the event of things getting really bad.
IT-wise, the wonderful Hurricane Relief Community Exchange that EDUCAUSE created post-Katrina is already in place for Rita victims, and it offers a lot of thoughtful interactivity and resources. I hope the administrators at the Texas institutions are aware of it; likewise the CampusRelief.org website.
Something else for those affected by Katrina and Rita to bear in mind is the generous work being done by ACUTA, the Association for Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education. In addition to offering yet another clearinghouse for those wishing to offer or ask for assistance, http://www.acuta.org/?1383#IMPORTANT ACUTA is forming volunteer teams of communications and networking infrastructure professionals to go to affected schools and assist with everything from damage assessment to physical repair.
And, of course, don’t overlook Campus Technology’s set of useful resources and links.
Between Ivan in Florida last year, Katrina in Louisiana and Mississippi, and
now Rita in Texas, you’d think that we’re learning enough lessons
to last a lifetime. One thing’s certain: If, in four years, we haven’t
learned and put a lot more of the lessons into practice, more than we learned
and put into practice after 9/11, it’ll be a disgrace.
About the author: Terry Calhoun is Director of Communications and Publications for the Society
for College and University Planning (SCUP). You can contact him through CT's IT Trends forum by clicking here. View more articles by Terry Calhoun.
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