daylia, some of us use humor to make the point.

But if you don't get the point, you likely won't get the humor.

azizi, as I understand it, phone calls from concerned parents and students actually inside the dorms at Xavier (which should tell you something right there: they still had operational cell phones & were text messaging out), along with friends and colleagues of parents with students in the dorms, put A LOT of pressure on certain African American leaders. You can go to a number of places on the internet (WIKI, Craig's list, etc) and find that people associated with XU (especially parents of students who had evacuated before the storm) created something of a media story about the students at XU. There were actually students in much worse shape at Dillard, actually, but that is another story.

So, Jesse Jackson got himself into town (why is it that the celebrities are having such an easy time getting into NO and are walking around in front of TV cameras?), got hold of a couple of buses, and is now claiming to have "rescued" the students from XU.

The reality on the ground at XU tells a different story. It appears that the students were just fine, and had food, water, dry high ground and were never in any danger of either being flooded, or being in harm's way (the campus police stayed on campus with them). When the National Guard came by the first time after the storm to check on them, it was determined they were in good shape, and were moved lower down on the evacuation list (for what should be very obvious reasons to anyone watching television this week).

According to my sister in law, they might have begun to run out of food and water in the next week sometime, but they were never really in any danger once the storm itself passed last Monday.

The information on evacuation is as follows:

All XU students and staff were evacuated to a bridge near the campus by police boats. They were left on the bridge from 11:30 AM to 7 PM. They were picked up by the National Guard at 7 PM and taken to another transportation staging area, where they then waiting until 10:30 PM to be loaded onto buses and driven to two locations in Baton Rouge.

It was all very orderly, and didn't take an unreasonable amount of time at all. While they waited on campus to be evacuated, they were fine.

I guess that isn't nearly as exciting a story as being rescued by Jesse Jackson stormin' the campus with Rainbow PUSH buses while being interviewed live by Larry King, but there you have it.