Although Williams only gets a brief mention, this CNN article discusses students displaced by Katrina.

Accustomed to low and flat New Orleans, Tameka Noel finds herself huffing and puffing as she walks the hilly campus of Amherst College near the Berkshire Mountains. And though it’s just October, it already feels like winter to her.

She misses friends, and Cajun food, and Bourbon Street, which puts small-town Amherst’s nightlife to shame.

She and the six other students from Xavier University who wound up here this semester won’t lie and tell you Hurricane Katrina was the best thing that ever happened to them, just because they get to spend time at an elite liberal arts college. They will, however, say they are grateful for the hospitality, and that — when all is said and done — their time at Amherst might have broadened their education.

“Some days are difficult and others aren’t,” said Noel, a senior from New Boston, Texas, who is part of Xavier’s well-regarded premed program. “But I think being outside your comfort zone is something everybody should experience.”

…

Amherst took its visitors shopping for the winter clothes they suddenly needed, and is even paying for them to fly home for Thanksgiving. In the classroom, it organized tutorials to help them catch up after missing the first two weeks of class. College officials say the students are doing fine academically.

For the Xavier students, it’s a way to get the courses they need to stay on track to medical school. But it’s also a chance to try some new things. At Xavier, they said, most classes are in a lecture-and-drill format. Their Amherst seminars have been a nice change of pace in both structure and content.

“We discussed homosexuality, which is definitely a big taboo at Xavier, being Catholic and all that,” said Noel, who added an elective on “cross-cultural constructions of gender” to her science coursework. The different classroom experience “is something I’ve enjoyed,” she said.

Worth reading, and thanks to David Rodriquez ‘06 for the link.

EphBlog, of course, specializes in taking people outside their comfort zone, at least on this topic.