Engineers As Activists?

Those are not two words I normally think of together.  After all, MIT or Rensselaer do not come to mind with, say, Cal Berkely as hotbeds of student activism.  But now come the engineering students at Tulane, who have found a cause that they can and should get behind:  saving the several engineering majors that were eliminated in the post-Katrina restructuring of the university.  It really is the ultimate irony that the civil engineering program that produced the engineer who designed the original pumps that have drained water from the streets of New Orleans for decades -- many of which continued to operate while newer pumps failed -- is being eliminated now, when the city is facing so many decisions on how to properly and safely rebuild.