Empirical evidence has now demonstrated that, like werewolves in a full moon, Georgetown students go insane during hurricanes. On Thursday night, in the thick of Isabel, students were doing things that they probably need to do more often-mud wrestling on the front lawn, bonging beers in the driving wind on Village A’s rooftops accompanied by chants of “IS-A-BEL! IS-A-BEL!”, making out in the rain, and generally rocking like a hurricane.
Meanwhile, Georgetown University (the institution) responded to the hurricane with contrastingly sober preparations. Unlike some District utilities, the University demonstrated that it was ready for the worst. E-mails sent to students in Henle Village, for example, prepared them for housing displaced students in their living rooms and asked them to make sure the drains around their apartment weren’t clogged. Students were also advised to get flashlights and move any valuables off the floor. These preparations were unnecessary in retrospect, but it represents solid planning all the same.
In the end, the campus didn’t flood, and we instead got just enough of nature’s fury to bring out the maniac in even the most restrained Hoya. This, of course, was something the University didn’t really prepare for. Department of Public Safety officers tried in vain to get students to stay inside during the hurricane, and facilities employees did their best to keep students off the front lawn after several rounds of mud wrestling reduced it to, well, mud. Being in a hurricane was just too much fun, and students caused far more damage to the campus than the storm itself.
The University prepared well for Isabel. Georgetown has spent the past several years trying to develop a response mechanism to a very different kind of disaster. Terrorism and hurricanes certainly aren’t analogous, but the administrative mechanisms for confronting any disaster will be similar. If our brief brush with Isabel is any indication, the University has so far done an excellent job preparing for emergencies. Now it just needs to learn to prepare for its students.
