When the largest Atlantic hurricane on record made landfall on the @@http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-10-30/nuclear-power-industry-passes-readiness-test@@East Coast on Oct. 29, 24 states were hit with floods, power outages, food shortages and extensive property damage. Hurricane Sandy totaled about $50 billion in damages and 113 fatalities in the United States.@@http://www.examiner.com/article/after-hurricane-sandy-thousands-of-pets-homeless-need-help AND http://fcw.com/articles/2012/11/05/sandy-hurricane-center.aspx@@
While current living conditions of those on the East Coast were severely altered and damaged, the futures of young adults residing in those areas were threatened as well.
A Nov. 1 early notification deadline set by the University of Oregon’s Office of Admissions proved to be a difficult deadline for those affected by Sandy to meet. To accommodate, the UO pushed back their deadline a full week, according to Kelly Talbert, senior assistant director of recruitment for the UO’s Office of Admissions.@@http://admissions.uoregon.edu/uocounselors/counselor-kellyt@@
“We received some communication from prospective students to let us know that they weren’t going to be able to complete application online due to power outages, or that they couldn’t submit certain documents because their school was closed and could not get signatures from a school counselor,” Talbert said.
Talbert said because of complaints there was a general consensus among the Office of Admissions to push back the deadline in order to accommodate prospective students in this situation.
“Everyone understood that changing the deadline was the right thing to do. Even though we are on the other side of the country and don’t see as many applicants as the East Coast schools do, we still felt there were enough cases that we needed to change the deadline,” Talbert said.
Talbert noted that the last time an application deadline was modified due to a natural disaster was in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast.@@http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/h/hurricane_katrina/index.html@@
The UO’s Robert D. Clark Honors College has also changed their admissions deadline to accommodate the delays prospective students may be experiencing due to Hurricane Sandy. The College’s early notification application deadline has been moved to Thursday, November 8, 2012, according to their website.