It'sbeen less than a month, but
Hurricane
Katrina rocked the
Dunlop,
25, was in the Big Easy over the summer working as a business/marketing intern
for the NFL team New Orleans Saints and had just finished the first week of his
third year at Tulane when he heard the news of the hurricane.
"I
was working down at the Superdome," he told Law Times. "I worked all day
because there was a Saints pre-season game and after the game ended at around midnight,
as I was cleaning out one of the executive suites there, the bartender pointed
up at the television and said, 'I think we may need to evacuate. It looks like
a bad one.'"
On
Aug. 27, Tulane cancelled classes and closed the school for the following week,
so Dunlop booked a plane ticket to
He
packed enough clothing for a week and scrambled to get a flight after Delta
called to say his flight had been cancelled. After a long journey with multiple
stopovers, he met his father in
"I
got home and sat there for a week glued to the television, trying to figure out
what was going on, whether I knew any of these parts of the city being
affected, whether I could see my house," he recalls.
A
fellow classmate at Tulane had e-mailed Dunlop to see what his plans were for
finishing his third year of law school, as the dean of Tulane had said if
students wanted to graduate on time they were going to have to go somewhere
else for the semester and transfer the credits back.
"At
that point the city wasn't safe, there was looting and the floodwaters were way
up, so it didn't look like there was going to be a semester at the law school,"
he says.
He
then called several law schools in
"I
didn't know what the process would be like, but the dean of admissions at
Western granted me an interview within two hours' notice. She accepted me
pretty much as I walked in and she wanted to know what she could do to help,"
Dunlop says.
"She
went about letting me look at the course catalogue and whether the courses I
was going to be taking would be of interest to me and they definitely were,
especially when they offered sports law. That was the reason I went down to
Tulane: they have the best sports law program in
Becky
Bannerman, communications officer at the faculty of law at Western, says the
school was the perfect choice for Dunlop.
"I
asked why did he choose Tulane for his law degree and he said that he was
really interested in sports law. Apparently they have a really good sports
program," she says. "And then I mentioned that it was good that he came to
Western because we have professor Richard McLaren here who is very well-known
in the sports law circles. He's been an arbitrator at the last three Olympics
and he runs our sports law clinic here.
"He
worked with Dick Pound in the doping commission so it was really good timing
for Adam to come here and he actually got into the sports law course so he was
really happy."
Dunlop
says it was a rushed weekend to get settled in
Dunlop
says he has adjusted to life on campus quickly, even though some of the subject
matter is foreign to him.
"It's
a little bit of a different experience just because I don't have any basis in
the Canadian legal system so obviously there is some fundamental law that I'm
missing, whether it be constitutional or tort or that sort of thing," he says.
"Thus far, it's been extremely great. The people on campus have been very
helpful."
"I'll
definitely be going back and doing what I can to help the city rebuild because
I've enjoyed my time down there thus far."
He
found out recently that the house where he lived in
"The
house is in decent condition but the ceiling in my room caved in so it looks
like pretty much everything that I left in there, which is pretty much
everything, is probably ruined or damaged.
"I'm
not that upset because it could have been a whole lot worse and I'm a lot
better off than most people," he says. "You know, selfishly you hope that your
things, especially your pictures and your personal valuables, aren't damaged
but if that's the worst that happens then I'm very lucky."
