North Texas

College Students Return Home to North Texas from Houston

A lot of colleges and universities were just beginning the fall semester in the Houston area, but had to cancel classes because of flooding from Harvey.

Many North Texans who drove down to start school are now back in DFW.

Freshman Tramell Jeffers thought he was saying goodbye to mom, dad and brother, but Hurricane Harvey had other plans.

The whole family, moved him into his dorm at Texas Southern University last Sunday, August 20. By Friday, dad flew back.

“I feel good. I'm very fortunate that I'm here at that my parents made me come back cause I would have been stuck out there,” said the TSU student.

Tramell's father, Tracey Jeffers, said he was hesitant, but knew it was the right call.

“You're thinking.. do I really want to go down? Do I really need to go down? But hearing some of the weather reports it seemed like it was gonna be really serious and this being his first time away I didn't want him to be in any type of predicament where he couldn't handle it,” said the elder Jeffers.

Both returned to Cedar Hill by car before the first day of school.

“At first I thought it was overreaction, but now looking at it, they did the right decision,” the freshman said.

Blocks away at the University of Houston, Mervin Wright was days in to his senior year when the school started sending out alerts.

“They said it's gonna be a lot of flooding so I was like yeah.. I see how bad it gets after one day. Five days of it? I'm not prepared for this,” Wright said.

He drove back too, in light rain, all the way to Duncanville. Now he worries for the friends who stayed.

“I'm hearing about people having to go in their attics and get on their roofs and people having to get boats to get out of there - that's when I was really getting worried about people who were down there,” he said.

One student sent him pictures from campus of dorms that aren't supposed to be water front and cars, nearly submerged.

The University of Houston is closed through Wednesday, but is taking care of students who stayed and monitoring water in dorms.

Over at TSU, they opened the cafeteria for Saturday brunch and the campus police chief is making the rounds. So far, TSU has only cancelled classes for Monday. Both schools are updating people through social media.

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