It has been seven months since the monstrous Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and left thousands of people without homes.

Many California State Universities opened their campuses to hurricane evacuees, offering in-state tuition and free housing for the first semester. Students like Ronnie Higgins and Christopher Gibson, who were both students at the University of New Orleans, were able to continue their education on these campuses.

Higgins was visiting San Francisco just weeks before he was to return to school in New Orleans. He told himself that if the opportunity ever presented itself, he would move here.

That opportunity was soon realized just weeks later when Hurricane Katrina ravaged his family’s home sending floodwaters into the University of New Orleans, where he majored in cinema.

According to Higgins, coming to SF State has been a culture shock. He said he left a campus that was all the way right and came to a campus that was all the way left.

He was also shocked by how asocial the students seemed to be.

“On campus it’s hard to meet people. In the classes I had at Louisiana State University and University of New Orleans the atmosphere was teamwork oriented. When I came here nobody talked to anybody. I’m like the southern loud mouth in my classes getting people to talk,” Higgins said.

Higgins lived in Chalmette, a suburb of New Orleans that was hit hard by the storm. He evacuated and found refuge with friends in Baton Rouge before the levees broke. The house where he lived with his parents and younger brother was damaged beyond repair with floodwaters reaching the roof of their single story home. They lost everything they owned.

Amongst the items Higgins lost were a semi-complete Beatles record collection, 300 albums, a turntable and books he had read and collected for six years. But it was the irreplaceable things that mattered to him the most.

“There are no pictures of me when I was a little kid. All the home movies you dread your mom showing your girlfriend are all gone,” Higgins said. “The place I grew up in doesn’t exist anymore, it’s still there but it’s pretty much a tent city.”

Christopher Gibson, 24, was also a student at the University of New Orleans when Katrina hit; he now attends Cal State East Bay. Although he is originally from the Bay Area he said it’s taken time to readjust to some of the uninviting attitudes.

“When I’m on the BART and I talk to people or just say hi they look at me like I’m crazy. They don’t want to talk,” says the Richmond native. “In New Orleans you say, ‘Hey how you doing?’ They have a whole conversation with you.”

Gibson moved to New Orleans in 2002, and wasn’t aware of what was going on when he had his first experience with a hurricane.

“I didn’t know what to do, get under the table or what. The school didn’t tell me anything about hurricane preparation. They didn’t say nothing,” Gibson said. “I didn’t know New Orleans had hurricanes.”

Gibson decided to ride out Hurricane Katrina with two of his friends thinking it would be downgraded. Like many others he watched as the floodwaters took over his home and eventually he and his friends ended up on the roof of their two-story home.

“I think a lot of people got tricked this time,” Gibson said. “Because my first time in New Orleans there were back to back hurricane warnings that were downgraded to a tropical storms, so there’s been a history of people riding out storms.”

The storm didn’t seem bad until the levees broke. He and his friends were outside playing around in the storm and when they went inside for a few hours and things went from bad to worse.

“The water started coming into our house … we get water and juice and go to the second floor. It was crazy because we forgot the food. The fridge and cupboards opened up and food was floating down around us,” Gibson said.

After three days Gibson was able to make it to a shelter in Baton Rouge. He contacted a friend who took him to Houston and he boarded a plane back to California.

“I left there with pajama bottoms, a tee shirt and my wallet, that’s all I had. I got to Oakland looking like a straight bum. It was crazy,” Gibson said.

Both Gibson and Higgins said the hurricane served as their way out for a change in atmosphere. Higgins said he’s grown tired of the sad reactions of students when he tells them he is from New Orleans.

“If anything I saw it as an opportunity to move to California. I’m one of those people who go with the cliché, ‘Everything happens for a reason’ and ‘what won’t kill you makes you stronger,” he said.