Class act: Georgia colleges reach out to students in Puerto Rico displaced by disaster
A flurry of storms, most powerful of them Hurricane Maria, devastated Puerto Rico and the northeastern Caribbean in late summer. It’s regarded by many as the most catastrophic natural disaster in Puerto Rico’s history, claiming at least 500 lives on that visland territory alone. The tragedy attracted media, political and humanitarian attention for a time, before we inevitably moved on to other concerns – as is the human habit, and as perhaps befits the lesser angels of human nature.
Three months later, just picking up and moving on isn’t an option for Puerto Ricans. As reported by staff writer Scott Berson, a third of the island is still without power, and both communications and transportation range from undependable to nonexistent, especially for people in the most remote parts of the territory.
Among the hardest hit, Berson reports, are students, with more than 1,000 schools still closed and teachers at the ones still open sometimes finding their classrooms empty.
In the spirit of the season (though they would surely do the same any time), some of Georgia’s private colleges, including nearby LaGrange College, have invited students from Puerto Rico’s storm-battered colleges to study here.
“This partnership means that Puerto Rico’s private college students will not suffer a delay in their studies,” according to a news release from Susanna Baxter, president of the Georgia Independent College Association.
The visiting students will be responsible for their own transportation, room and board — but the tuition they pay will go back to their home colleges to for repairs, maintenance and payroll obligations, so those schools will be ready to resume operations when they return.
Baxter’s counterpart, Carmen Cividanes-Lago of the Association of Private Colleges and Universities of Puerto Rico, expressed that organization’s gratitude for this hand extended, enabling the students to continue their education for a semester: “Thank you, Georgia.”
Cemetery woes
We didn’t know, and probably few people in Columbus knew, that record-keeping for the four city cemeteries was so spotty; that is, where there were any records at all.
But as reported by staff writer Alva James-Johnson, a city audit following two whistleblower complaints — one from people who found someone else buried in a family member’s plot — shows that some upgrading and updating are in order, to put it mildly.
There’s confusion about funding and budgets, confusion over plots and, obviously, confusion over legal title to those plots.
Internal auditor Elizabeth Barfield showed council what passes for cemetery record keeping: an antique ledger from the Clerk of Council’s Office recording the original purchase of lots, and nothing thereafter. “There are absolutely no physical records of any of the deeds that have been prepared for the sale of these lots,” she said … “we really have no way of proving ownership.”
The good news: There apparently is money, the audit found, for software to keep track of burial site deeds as well as financial records. That would seem to be an idea whose time has come.
This story was originally published December 18, 2017 at 5:18 PM with the headline "Class act: Georgia colleges reach out to students in Puerto Rico displaced by disaster."