‘It completely baffles me’ USC Gould School of Law students Alison Vasan, Nina Hernandez, Kerri Sparks and Patrick Hogan get a first-hand view of the ravages of Hurricane Katrina as they walk the streets of New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward near the Industrial Canal levee break. Photos courtesy of USC Gould School of Law

Issue: Summer 2006

Legal Rescue

Over spring break in post-Katrina New Orleans, students of USC’s Gould School helped residents rake through the legal rubble. Their journals bear witness to an ongoing tragedy.

By Gilien Silsby

When a city is fighting for its life, devastated by hurricane and flood, thoughts turn to what is immediately needed. Water. Shelter. Medicine. But when much of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast washed away in late August 2005, basic social contracts were swept away as well. Pay records. Court documents. Police files.

Students at the USC Gould School of Law understood that legal aid needed to be part of the overall disaster relief effort. So over spring break, nearly 40 of them volunteered their time, money and energies to spend a week in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Biloxi, Mississippi. Working alongside practicing attorneys – literally around the clock – they helped untangle a welter of FEMA forms, advocated for renters facing eviction and sifted through the criminal docket system to identify prisoners stuck in jail well past their release dates.

Many of the students kept journals, describing harsh conditions and massive confusion. Kerri Sparks, a first-year student from Utah, wrote this after her first day in New Orleans:

It completely baffles me how devastated places still are, seven months after the hurricane. (Can someone please tell me how it is possible that these people were lacking food and safe water to drink when it only took me four hours to fly across the country, and I know there were gallons upon gallons of clean water at the Costco next to my house?) People still aren’t receiving their government assistance and are not being given notice of their homes being bulldozed.

The fledgling lawyers worried whether the property law class they had taken last semester would apply to New Orleans, where the legal system – rooted in the Napoleonic code – is very different from the other 49 states. Or whether one contracts class could possibly cut through the miles of red tape suffocating the region now.

Katie Stehle, a first-year student from Pennsylvania, wrote this journal entry early on:

There are thousands of people in jail right now, and have been since the storm. Some of them are in for parking violations. Others for being intoxicated on Bourbon Street. Some were in there on trumped up charges. Regardless of the offense, they’re still locked away because the records are so messed up. Six months in jail for a traffic violation! Crazy.

Several students found themselves performing legal triage. Third-year student Luke Sisak – already employed by the L.A. District Attorney last spring and soon to be a deputy DA – spent a week in a New Orleans federal courthouse sifting through thousands of individual court dockets.

We basically had to come in and build a tracking system for the thousands of defendants being held in prisons across Louisiana. It feels a bit strange, because I work for the District Attorney’s office, but I know that the most important part of my job is to make sure justice is being served. Many of these prisoners should have been freed long ago, but they’re caught in a confused, broken system.

As Sisak’s team catalogued this information, they prioritized it too. Files involving prisoners whose release dates had already passed automatically moved to the top of the to-do list. It was grueling, mind-numbing work.

“I feel like we packed a lifetime into one week,” says Sisak, looking back on the experience that was his own brainchild.

A native of Rhode Island, Sisak had decided to organize the USC trip after learning that the national Student Hurricane Network (www.studenthurricanenetwork.org) was looking for law students to help Gulf Coast residents. “I felt like we had some knowledge and skills that could really help out,” he says.

After contacting the national public-interest organization, he began recruiting fellow USC Gould students. It was a tough sell. Volunteers would have to pay their own airfare, housing and expenses – an estimated $1,000 per person.

Such “alternative” spring breaks are now fairly common among undergraduates, but they’re nearly unheard of for professional students – many of whom already have full-time jobs and other responsibilities, not to mention college loans to pay off in addition to graduate tuition.

“This was a pretty big commitment,” Sisak says. “So I expected five, maybe 10 students to sign up. I was stunned when 60 students showed up at an informational meeting.” Nearly 40 of them eventually made the trip.

Of the 61 participating universities, the USC Gould School had one of the largest contingents. In all, some 700 law students nationwide took part in the effort.

		‘This debris was so many people’s lives’ Left, student Katie Stehle works out of a folding chair in the "legal room" of the Common Ground, a grassroots collective assisting victims of Katrina.
		Left, outside the Louisiana Department of Labor in Central City, students Andrea Maldonado and Stacie Torres help residents with paperwork requesting legal aid. Photos courtesy of USC Gould School of Law

For second-year student Nina Hernandez, the decision to go was a no-brainer. “I could not in good conscience go to Hawaii for spring break when there was an opportunity to help in New Orleans,” she says. A resident of West Hills, Calif., she had previously participated in public service projects through the USC Gould chapter of La Raza Law Students Association, a Latino organization that operates a juvenile diversion program called Teen Court.

In Louisiana, Hernandez’s language skills proved almost as important as her legal skills.

“My project involved interviewing day laborers,” she says. “One of the things that struck me the most was the lack of Spanish-speaking lawyers in New Orleans. It is definitely a need that has to be filled in the coming years as more day laborers are migrating to the area.”

Assigned to the Workers’ Rights Project, Hernandez listened as laborers hired to rebuild after the storm reported abuses ranging from being denied pay to being asked to work without proper health and safety equipment. The information was later compiled in formal complaints.

In her journal, Hernandez wrote:

Almost everyone we interviewed had an employer who did not pay him. One man had the names of four employers who [had] skipped out on him. Many men were brought here from another state or country with the promise of work and money and shelter. When one worker was asked if he had gotten all that he was promised, he said, “If I had, I wouldn’t be here and neither would you.” He was right.

Katie Stehle’s peer-mediation skills came in just as handy as her lawyering.

I volunteered to take on a case for a woman who rented a car at a certain rate from a car rental agency, which subsequently tried to charge her over double.... The client was fantastic. She had made copies of the contract at several different points along the way, [noting] each point when they altered it. We drove to the rental place, where we stuck it out to talk to a manager and got everything resolved. It makes me a little bit mad that it worked when I was there, but not when she went alone. Why weren’t they just straight with her in the first place? Was it the presence of a future lawyer? An observer?

No storm in American history has matched the breadth and depth of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation. It compares in scale to the Chicago fire of 1871 and the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, both of which destroyed an entire city. In Katrina’s case, the greatest damage occurred after the storm had passed and the levees and floodwalls gave way. Even a half-year later, the human loss etches itself on the memory like a nightmare cartoon.

Nina Hernandez’s journal offers a bleak glimpse:

In the road are Spiderman’s head and a flattened SpongeBob backpack. It sinks in that this is so much more than the wreckage that we see now. This debris was so many peoples’ lives – kids’ lives. I see a mangled piece of rusted metal and think: “I can’t believe that was once an ironing board.” I see a fish tank stuck between housing insulation. I feel like I’m playing that game in Highlights magazine, where you look for all the hidden objects. You always find them in places where they’re not likely to be, twisted and turned around in directions that you least expect. These were people’s lives.

Gregory Pleasants thought he had seen the world’s worst devastation during a year he spent in Nicaragua working in a shelter for street children. But after a week in the Gulf, the third-year USC Gould School student and North Carolina native was struck by the similarities he saw in Biloxi. 

“I never thought that I would walk through Managua again, especially not in Mississippi,” he wrote in his journal.

Managua had been all but leveled by a powerful earthquake in 1972; even though Pleasants visited some 30 years later, he found substantial portions of the city had never been rebuilt. He couldn’t help but wonder if the Gulf would meet the same fate.

His journal records a surreal landscape:

I never thought that a bridge could look like a Twizzler or a crusty old shoelace. But it’s possible. In Biloxi there is, or rather there was, a bridge that spans a large body of water. It is now a miles-long wreckage of twisted steel and crumbled concrete, great slabs of it.

Pleasants recalls sending letters home from Managua in which he had naïvely described the ruined capital in terms of its “twisted beauty.”

This time around, the ruins seemed less poetic. His journal reflects the change:

Especially after seeing the devastation in Mississippi, it is harder for me to be so insouciant about the physical destruction of either Managua or Gulfport. I realize now that these were people’s homes and businesses and churches and schools that were destroyed, and that real people have been really hurt by the destruction. That isn’t beauty – “twisted” or not – in Managua or in Gulfport. It does not seem acceptable to me to passively accept what is left rather than work positively toward a full recovery. Maybe that’s not for me to decide, but that’s what I feel now anyway.

‘It’s the end of an era’ Helicopters carrying a Congressional delegation buzz overhead while Nina Hernandez, Kerri Sparks and Alison Vasan view one of the city’s worst-hit neighborhoods from the ground. Aerial tours for dignitaries are a common feature of the post-Katrina landscape. Photo courtesy of USC Gould School of Law

Andrew Coffin, a first-year student and trip organizer from Piedmont, Calif., was filled with dread as he packed his bags for New Orleans. Before coming to USC, Coffin had taught special education at a middle school located in an area pummeled by storm and flood. As of April, only six schools in all New Orleans had reopened. Coffin’s was not one of them. Expecting the worst, he still wasn’t prepared for what he found. The campus was nearly destroyed. FEMA trailers covered the neighboring park where the children had once played. Coffin reported in his journal:

I went back to visit my old school, and it was pretty difficult to see. I realize in all likelihood it will never be open again. Before the hurricane hit, it had problems and a bad reputation. But it’s sad because [the school] caters to a population that was hard hit. This past year was the school’s 50th anniversary. It’s the end of an era. One of my students lives directly across the street. The apartment was totally gutted. There wasn’t even a front door. I don’t know what happened to him.

Coffin managed to track down the school’s former principal and the head of special education; both are now employed by a charter school. He noted:

It was inspiring to see that after they lost so much, they are back at schools working and trying to regain some semblance of life. [But] there are not enough tools for the students.

His experiences in New Orleans reaffirm why Coffin is in law school. “I want to use this knowledge to help people, to help defend those who don’t have the means to defend themselves,” he says in an interview following his return.

Even students without personal ties to the region found themselves bonding with the people they assisted, admiring their strength and hope amid misery.

After Katie Stehle had resolved the inflated car rental claim, her grateful client had taken her to see St. Augustine’s, the oldest African-American Catholic Church in the country. Stehle wrote angrily:

The Diocese is trying to shut down the parish and merge them with another church. That doesn’t make sense to me. These people have just lost their homes – why take away their church now? Their membership is even up lately, because so many churches were damaged that people from other churches go there to worship. Anyway, this poor woman is gutting out her home, throwing away her ruined possessions and fighting to keep her church, all at the same time. It just doesn’t seem right.

First-year student Grace Hwa from Fullerton, Calif., was touched by an encounter with Herbert, an 80-year-old nearly blind man who had once been a bus driver and a mechanic for the City of New Orleans. She wrote in her journal:

I know he couldn’t have still been working as a mechanic because of his eyesight. However, when we saw him he was wearing a mechanic’s outfit and even his RTA badge that he proudly showed me. The picture was worn and probably 30 years old, but he was proud of it. It made me think perhaps that was one of the only things he had to wear, but also that he clung desperately to his identity. He was on his one-hour routine trip to the post office to pick up his mail. Herbert explained to us that postal services in New Orleans were not working anymore, and people had to come pick up their mail or it would be thrown away every 10 days.

I couldn’t help but feel sad for the difficulty of his situation as such an old man. His home had been damaged by a few feet of water. He [had] fixed one room in his house and lived there until just two or three weeks ago. He now lives by himself in a FEMA trailer that lacks air-conditioning and uses a car battery for electricity.”

More than one student said the experiences changed their view of law school. “I actually hated law school up until I went to New Orleans,” says a candid Kerri Sparks, having just completed her first year. “I wasn’t sure why I was here in school or if I should’ve stayed at my prior job in public relations. But going down to help out after Katrina really put my law career into focus for me.”

As she wrote in her journal immediately after the trip:

I realized how spoiled I am to have held the assumption that everyone goes to grad school, and anyone can get a law degree. The truth is not everyone can get into law school. I did get in, and I know I can handle it. I feel inspired, and almost like I have an obligation to continue law school just to help people.

That’s exactly what Lisa Mead, associate dean of the USC Gould School’s new Office of Public Service, likes to hear.

Mead’s office works to expand student opportunities for pro bono work and internships. The Gulf Coast volunteer effort fit perfectly into the office’s mission of matching students with service-learning opportunities.

The nearly 40 USC Gould School participants came away with “powerful, life-changing and affirming experiences,” says Mead, who accompanied the volunteers. “For many, the Gulf Coast trip marked their first experience in volunteering. Now that we’re back home, I’m confident that many of them will look to provide public service in their own community, investigate clinical opportunities or internships, or work with judges or the courts.”

The last entry in Nina Hernandez’s journal suggests Mead isn’t far off the mark. It speaks volumes about the life-changing significance of the visit. On her first day back home, Hernandez wrote:

Walking around my Santa Monica neighborhood this afternoon, the sun shining down on my face and a light breeze tapping my skirt, I realized that I live in paradise. I missed the realness of New Orleans. I missed the feeling that I was needed and belonged and comfortable. I missed the warm hug and the sweet smell of the humid air. I can’t wait to return.