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From the Dean  Katrina. The name will live in infamy. It dominated our fall, but it will not define our existence nor will it suppress the will of our people to survive, to prevail. Hurricane Katrina was not just a regional disaster; it was a national disaster. We are still experiencing the aftershocks of this catastrophic storm, and we will be dealing with its devastating effects for many years to come. All of us grieve for those who have suffered loss, including loss of loved ones, and all of us have been affected in one way or another. John Donne said it best: “No man is an island, entire of itself; ... any man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind.” Many of us have pitched in to help. The law library sent a copy of the Mississippi Code, as well as other reference materials, to Pascagoula. Many of our law students have made trips to the coast, in some cases to locate and help parents and other family members, in others simply to help with the relief efforts. Some of our faculty and staff have made trips to the coast to help as well, mostly in conjunction with their churches here in Oxford. Those who could not go to offer hands-on help have assisted the recovery effort in other ways, through generous contributions to various relief efforts such as the American Red Cross, Salvation Army and others. The law school this fall accepted students from law schools at Tulane and Loyola as transient students for the fall, as have many law schools around the country. Most of ours are from Mississippi. They have added significantly to the quality and diversity of our student body. I want to add that students in Professor Debbie Bell’s Civil Law Clinic put together a manual that provides assistance and advice to people who are victims of Hurricane Katrina. Debbie also worked with clinical professors at other law schools to create a Hurricane Task Force, coordinated by the Clinical Section of the Association of American Law Schools, to expand the manual for use by other clinics, law schools or by the general public. Our faculty and our students were at the forefront of this national effort, and they are to be commended. The manual is available online, as the story on page 52 in this issue mentions. Our alumni also were involved in work that can only be described as heroic, as the story about Amanda Jones’s work through the Young Lawyers Division of the Mississippi Bar chronicles. I still recall the summer of 1969. Graduation was only a couple of months behind me, and Carolyn and I departed Oxford for Charlottesville, Va., where I was to begin work on an LL.M. degree. We left the day before Camille hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Camille followed us to Virginia, where just south of us the hurricane did the greatest amount of damage (and with the greatest loss of life), second only to the damage done to the Mississippi coast. I still had a couple of weeks before school started, so I spent those days helping with the cleanup and relief effort in Nelson County, Va. I still recall the dazed looks of the victims, some of whom had lost their homes, and some of whom had lost family members. But I remember their indomitable spirit as well. Camille for all these years was the benchmark against which all other storms were measured. Many people, I am sure, thought that because they had survived Camille, they could survive any other hurricane. Nothing could be worse than Camille. We were all wrong. Katrina has now set a new standard, one that I pray will never be surpassed. The days ahead will be difficult. As a community we will survive if we pull together as Mississippians traditionally have done. In the well-known and classical words of William Faulkner, in accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature: “I believe that man will not merely endure; he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.” May God bless you all. Samuel M. Davis (J.D. 69)
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