Winds, rain and flood water from Hurricane Katrina may have destroyed much of New Orleans, but officials are making sure that damage done to universities in the city are repaired as soon as possible.

According to CNN.com, officials at colleges such as Tulane and Xavier intend to “get students back on track by adding an additional semester tucked between the end of classes this spring and the start of the 2006-07 school year.”

Additionally, officials within New Orleans universities plan to allow students from Xavier and Dillard; the schools hit the hardest, to take classes at relatively unharmed Tulane and Loyola, with Xavier and Dillard lending faculty.

Students from Xavier are very pleased with these recent announcements and remain optimistic that the university will be up and running as soon as possible

“Xavier is known for overcoming hardships so I feel very confident about it reopening,” said Edward Mazique II, a senior from XavierUniversity who transferred to HowardUniversity after the hurricane. “Xavier has plenty of time for it to reopen because they have already started contracted. We only had six feet of water and they can rebuild and replace what has been damaged.”

Because Tulane and Loyola are on higher ground, they are in better shape than Xavier, which must repair its flooded library, and Dillard, which must repair three dorms lost to storm-related fires.

Despite his success as a student at Howard, Mazique said he will remain loyal to Xavier and return to the university once it reopens on Jan. 17, 2006.

“I want to go back because I put in three years of hard work there,” he said. “As far as the faculty, Xavier has done a lot for me. They bend over backwards for their students. I have talked to faculty recently and they’re real concerned about how students are doing.”