Loyola University • New Orleans • Volume 93 • Issue 14 • Jan. 16, 2015
THE MAROON FOR A GREATER LOYOLA
Former employee launches website against administration By Lauren Saizan lesaizan@loyno.edu @Lauren_Maroon
THE NEW FRERET Home and business owners in the Freret neighborhood find difficulties reclaiming their properties nearly 10 years after Hurricane Katrina By Gabriel Garza jggarza@loyno.edu @jggarza_maroon
D’artanian Stovall, A’98 is one of many residents in the Freret community that have fought to keep ownership of their homes. “Katrina left a bunch of people in a rough situation and we are 10 years out of Katrina. As you can see, I’m still rebuilding today,” Stovall said. Stan Norwood, president of Neighbors United, said that the problem first started in 2007 and that there was an influx of cases in 2008. “If you were underinsured, the property tax on your home would be too high for you to maintain ownership of your house as well as Code Enforcement leaving owners a fine for cracking down,” Norwood said. “Plus, back in 2008, jobs still weren’t available for residents to move back into the city.” In Stovall’s case, his house was originally in his grandmother’s name. In 2003, his grandmother,
mother and father passed away. Stovall’s grandmother never left ownership of the house to her children, making it hard for them to claim ownership of the house when there was no written document stating who the property belonged to. “My mom, my dad and my grandmother all passed away within six months. That took somewhat of a toll on the family,” Stovall said. “My siblings and I were left with the family home in 2003. I finished school in 2004 and then in 2005, Katrina came.” Stovall said that he assumed his siblings would care for the house because they were still in the city, while he resided in Philadelphia following Katrina. When they did not, he returned to New Orleans because of threats from the city to take the property and sell it. Norwood said there have been controversial aspects of reacquiring property in the Freret neighborhood within the past few years following Hurricane Katrina. “From what we’re hearing is there are a lot of pre-Katrina residents who were not fully informed on how
to rectify and restore their family homes. However, information had been freely given to newcomers to the neighborhood,” Norwood said. Some original residents were not as lucky as Stovall, who fought with the Freret Housing Center’s property campaign committee to maintain ownership of his house from buyers who were interested in purchasing his property. Celeste Dunbar, former owner of the Freret Street restaurant Dunbar’s Creole Cooking, came back to the city following Katrina, wanting to restore her heavily damaged restaurant, but she was unable to do so. Norwood said Dunbar did not receive any proper information on how to rectify and restore her restaurant after it sustained damage. “People bought it out, turned around, sold it and then sold it again,” Norwood said. The property remains empty to this day. Kellie Grengs, a costume director at Loyola said that she doesn’t think the statistics match up with the notion that current residents are being forced out of the neighborhood.
KARLA DANIELA ROSAS/ The Maroon
See FRERET, page 4
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A former Loyola employee is determined to reach the offices of administrators through complaints, letters and an entire website chronicling what she describes as the ordeal of her four years at the university. Sharron Mangum, former executive assistant to the dean in the college of social sciences, recently launched a website called “CleanUpLOYNO.org” as a follow-up to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint that she filed against the university in March 2013. In the complaint, Mangum alleges that she suffered age discrimination, racial discrimination and constructive termination during her time working at Loyola from 2010 to 2014. “Constructive termination is when your work environment is so horrific that you can’t tolerate it anymore, and it affects you mentally, emotionally and physically,” Mangum said. During her time at Loyola, Mangum worked as the assistant to Roger White, interim dean of the college of social sciences. White said that he was surprised by the allegations made against him on the website because he enjoyed working with Mangum. “It would be like if you had someone that you got along with very well, and then you weren’t seeing them anymore, then you heard that they were saying things about you that were unpleasant. It wouldn’t be so much a question of anger, just sad,” White said. Mangum said that the trouble arose when she applied for a promotion but was rejected. She also said that her workload spanned more than what was in her job description. “I had been doing all of the job responsibilities required of the director in addition to having the associate dean’s responsibilities without ever having the title and the compensation,” Mangum said. When asked if he had known of any of the statements made against him on the website, White said that he was “vaguely aware.” “I know that there have been some things put out on the Web, and people have sent me the links, but I won’t read them. As interim dean of this college, I need to keep my mind focused on my job and making sure that I can serve the students and the faculty and the rest of the Loyola community as well as I can,” White said. Mangum said that she then went on leave for medical reasons associated with the job. “Before I had left Loyola, I ended up in the hospital with symptoms of what was thought to be a ministroke. I had started having severe migraine headaches which triggered the stroke-like symptoms,”
See WEBSITE, page 3