At State U. of Haiti, Officials Count Their Losses and Mourn Their Dead

As rescue workers struggle to provide food and medical care to survivors of Haiti’s devastating earthquake last week, administrators at the State University of Haiti are mourning their dead while working to assess the damage to the country’s main institution of higher education.

The news is not good. An unknown number of students and faculty and staff members were killed when buildings collapsed on campuses of the university scattered across the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. Victims included Pierre Vernet, dean of the linguistics faculty and a well-known advocate of Haiti’s native Creole language, said Ary Regis, a professor of communication and education technology at the university.

The buildings that housed the linguistics faculty and the school of education were leveled in the earthquake, and other structures were seriously damaged, Mr. Regis wrote by e-mail. He said he and his family had escaped harm. But, he added, “like almost everyone in Port-au-Prince, we no longer have a house, and we’re living in tents.”

The university, whose roughly 15,000 students pay no tuition, was an island of opportunity in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country. However, the university was already struggling with severe money shortages in a country where the annual GDP per capita is a paltry $1,300 (the comparable figure for the United States is $47,500).

Many students are so poor they can afford only two meals a day. Most are forced to share books and even notebooks. And those who lack electricity at home are forced to study in public parks.

That situation will only get worse following the earthquake, which has killed more than 70,000 people and left some three million homeless, out of a total population of nine million, according to government figures.