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Show UTAH CHRONICLE Monday, November 28, 2005 Blizzards, accidents slow holiday travel Holiday traffic sits backed up near mile marker 169 in Eagle-Vail, Colo, after the Vail area is hit by a snowstorm Saturday, closing Vail Pass at mile marker 180. The high country Is expected to receive more snow throughout the weekend. more prestigious school. Of course, students won't truly be forced to return; host colleges can simply refuse to let them transfer there next semester. There's nothing to prevent students from withdrawing from their New Orleans schools and trying to transfer next fall like anyone else. So the question becomes, if students are determined to transfer, why force them to return to New Orleans at all? That's what Amy McClendon, a Tulane freshman from Amite, La., who ended up at Harvard after a brief stint at Louisiana State University, is wondering. She wants to stay at Harvard but will have to return to Tulane and take her chances applying for transfer next fall (Harvard does not let any visiting freshmen apply to transfer). That would mean going back to be a new freshman—for the fourth time. "I don't want to have to go through it again," she said. "All my friends are here." Another Tulane student at Harvard, Julie Hall, was so disheartened by conditions in New Orleans on a recent visit that she's applying to transfer to a third school, Wellesley or Washington University. Five of the seven Tulane freshmen at Harvard want to stay there, she said. "I'm sympathetic to the (New Orleans) schools," said Hall, who says she has made great friends and been a crew coxswain at Harvard. "At the same time, it's my education and I should have the right to go where I want." Neither she nor McClendon had applied to Harvard out of high school. The situation has placed college administrators in a bind. "We're sort of in this moral, ethical dilemma here," said Esther Gulli, chief of staff to the vice chancellor for student affairs at Berkeley, which has been counseling displaced students on their options. "These students have been through a great deal here, and obviously they're just trying to look for a little consistency in their lives. But our agreements with thenschools were, when they were open and ready for business we would send their students back." Swisher, the Tulane student at Virginia, said New Orleans was a big reason she chose Tulane, but the city isn't the same. And despite Tulane's assurances, she says she won't have some opportunities she was counting on, like a Swahili class she had planned to take. At Virginia, she wants to play with her volleyball team, whose games start next semester. Richard Whiteside, Tulane's vice president of enrollment management and dean of admission, says only about 5 percent of Tulane students have withdrawn so far, and more than 90 percent of freshmen have said they plan to return. "If somebody's going to be extraordinarily unhappy coming back, we don't want them to come back," Whiteside said. He still wants other colleges to stick by their promises not to poach. "I really believe, if students come back for a semester they won't leave again," he said. "New Orleans really gets into their DNA" The Associated Press ute delays by afternoon, Chicago Department of Aviation spokeswoman Wendy Abrams said. Some 210,000 passengers were expected to pass through its concourses Sunday. The biggest trouble spot for travelers stretched from Colorado through Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas where blizzard conditions and freezing rain sent cars spinning off roads and forced a shutdown of several highways, including a large stretch of eastbound Interstate 70, the major east-west corridor, from Denver to the Kansas line. Freezing rain turned roads to ice rinks for miles around Fargo, N.D. "It is bumper to bumper," North Dakota Transportation Department district supervisor Bruce Nord said. "There's slush on the road It's just unbelievable, the traffic. When one goes in the ditch, it takes three or four people along." The Associated Press Salt Lake airport tops in timeliness Some New Orleans college students don't want to return Stephanie Swisher is settling in nicely as a freshman at the University of Virginia, enjoying classes, Naval ROTC, club volleyball and football Saturdays. Things are going so well, in fact, that she would rather not return to Tulane University in New Orleans—the school she had expected to attend until Hurricane Katrina struck. "The argument that everyone's giving me is that I'm a freshman so I've never known Tulane, I need to give it a chance,'" she said. "My argument is, why should I have to?" Swisher probably will have to give Tulane a chance. Despite her wishes—and a 600signature petition she helped organize—Virginia is sticking by the conditions under which visiting students were admitted after the hurricane: they must return when their school reopens. And Tulane is scheduled to reopen Jan. 17. After Katrina, colleges around the country took in an estimated 18,000 displaced New Orleans students. Now, the New Orleans schools desperately need those students to return next semester and pay tuitioa Exactly how many will return won't be known until January. Tulane says 80 percent of its students have already reregistered. Loyola University, which received little damage, just started registration and can only say more than half for now. The situation will likely be more dire at schools like Xavier and Dillard, which are poorer and suffered more storm damage. Some students simply want to stay where they are, particularly freshmen who never got attached to their original schools. Student councils at Virginia, Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley, have passed resolutions calling on their schools to be more flexible in letting New Orleans students at least apply to transfer. Officially, those and other colleges are saying no, wary of breaking their promises to other schools or, in some cases, of letting students use the situation to "trade up" to a DENVER—The trip home after Thanksgiving was slow going for many travelers Sunday as blizzard conditions wreaked havoc from Colorado to the Midwest. In California, a Greyhound bus headed from Los Angeles to San Francisco overturned, killing two people, injuring dozens and backing up traffic on California's Highway IOI near Santa Maria for most of the morning. Authorities suspect driver fatigue contributed to crash—the bus had left shortly after 3 a.m. and the driver had been on the road the night before. The major airports reported few delays outside the central part of the country, where a storm system brought blowing snow and thunderstorms. Rain delayed flights out of Chicago's O'Hare International Airport up to an hour and a half Sunday morning, but improved to about 30 min- SALT LAKE CITY—Of the 33 largest airports nationwide, Salt Lake City International has the best record for on-time arrivals. Data released by the U.S. Bureau of Transportation statistics shows the airport's ranking improved from thirdbest during the first three quarters of 2004 to first over the same time period in 2005. Since 1998, the only year the airport had a better performance was in 2003, when nearly 90 percent of flights were on-time. The airport ranked second for on-time departures this year, behind first-place Houston by just .06 percent. Overall, about 84 percent of all flights into Salt Lake City were on time between January and September. About 85 percent also took off on schedule, according to the bureau's report. Flights that leave or arrive within 15 minutes of their scheduled time are considered on-time. Weather is the single biggest factor in on-time performance, bureau spokesman Bill Mosley said. In Salt Lake City's case, the good marks are a combination of pleasant weather and exceptional airport operations, airport spokesman Barbara Gann said. "We have a strong partnership with the airlines and work very closely with them to streamline the airport operations, and the stats bear that out," she said. Federal Aviation Administration officials have been pushing to redesign the airspace around Salt Lake's airport for several years because it is growing more crowded. Without a redesign, the in- creasing amount of airline traffic could begin to effect flight timeliness, but the proposal has been balked at by politicians and the city's Department of Airports. Keith Christensen, who sits on both the Airport board and the Utah Air Travel Commission, says the smooth operations help the city's economy. "The city understands that (the airport) is one of the crown jewels of this region," he said "Without it, the business community and the recreation community would not be as vibrant as they both are. Business people want to know that their people can be efficient in traveling." The Associated Press NEED MONEY? Receive up to $ 1 8 0 a month. Study while you donate life-saving plasma! FIRST TIME DONORS^ Present this coupon on your first visit and get a 801.363.7697 • 609 S. 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