By Isabella May
TAMPA, Fla. — After Hurricane Helene, the students at The University of Tampa thought their school routine and academics would return to normal. However, less than a week and a half later, Florida was struck by Hurricane Milton. This caused students to flee campus in just a matter of hours and get to a safe destination away from the storm. After a week away from campus, all students were welcome back to a safe campus and ready to move forward with our year. Well, that was not the case for all students living on campus.
Urso vs. Milton
The Urso Hall dorm building is across the street from Vaughn Center at UTampa. While everyone was welcome back to campus and their dorms, those students were not.
Marissa Johnson, a student at UTampa, said the University sent out an email to all Urso Hall residents saying, “Because electricity had not been restored upon return to school, we’d be unable to stay in our rooms until they could fix it.” They were allowed to visit their dorms for a few moments that Sunday to pack clothes and school supplies and check for any damages from the storm.
Aeryn Mike, sophomore Urso Hall resident, said that the University told them “that I would have to stay off campus or live in Barrymore until power returned.”
The question running through everyone’s minds was, “How is this fair?”
Looking for a place to stay
While the Urso Hall dorms were closed, students were frantically trying to find a place to stay by asking friends and trying to find hotels that did not cost too much. While this was a stressful time, the University did help with this problem.
Johnson spoke out on how the school helped students who had nowhere to go by holding them up in the Barrymore — a hotel that is about a 10-minute walk from campus — until Urso Hall was reopened: “This meant that everyone was paired with roommates, even those that paid for single rooms at the start of the year.”
“I stayed with my friend in Palm,” said Mike.
“I stayed in the Barrymore during the time of closure,” said Angie Rodriguez, sophomore and Urso Hall resident.
While the school did give the option for students to stay in the Barrymore, was it right to still start school while some students had nowhere to go?
How did this affect the students at the University?
“This change affected my week quite a bit,” said Johnson. “Because we weren’t allowed to return to our rooms at all, any items forgotten were unavailable for that foreseeable future.”
She also discussed the issue with meal plans after the hurricane: “Quite a few Urso students, including myself, use Urso’s exclusive seven-meals-a-week meal plan, as Urso has kitchens. This meant that many students had to purchase additional meals that week.” This was obviously something students were unprepared to do, adding additional stress to an already stressful week.
“It affected my school week because I could not access the books in my dorm and was extremely stressed that I would fall behind on work,” said Mike.
It seemed that the main catalyst for the students’ stress was the lack of materials needed to return back to school and be a student during that week. Not only were living conditions difficult, but transportation to and from campus was also extremely exhausting.
“Instead of simply crossing the street to get to class, I walked about 20 minutes from the Barrymore to get to my classes which was extremely inconvenient,” said Rodriguez.
Due to all these setbacks and adjustments, should the University have opened when they did, or should they have waited to ensure that all students would be able to be let back into their dorms and continue their academic year with fewer hiccups than they had?