RSS
|
Mobile
|
Daily Emails
|
We Twitter
| Make us your home page
By HOLLY HUFFMAN
Chelsea and Heather Desforges sat at the back of a classroom Wednesday, staring at a map of the Texas A&M University campus.
As juniors at Texas A&M University at Galveston, the twin sisters often spotted the same people -- friends and classmates -- day in and day out as they walked across their small island campus. The Sea Aggies had their schedules all mapped out and knew where their classes were and how long it would take to get there from their third-floor apartment in downtown Galveston.
But things are no longer quite so straightforward.
The 20-year-old sisters -- who share the same schedule and major: ocean and coastal resources -- now are on an exponentially larger campus.
Because of scheduling conflicts, most three-hour classes meet just once a week, including the Desforgeses' economics class, where their professor is beamed at them from a classroom at the University of Houston, they said. Their government class meets just once every other week.
Their geography class meets at a nearby Methodist church, but much of the work will be done online on students' own time because the room isn't outfitted with the computers needed for the class.
"It's so weird," Chelsea Desforges said, referring to her distance-learning economics course. "We can still ask him questions, but it's different."
The sisters are among the more than 1,500 students from A&M's Galveston campus relocated to College Station in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike. About 70 faculty members from the Galveston campus agreed to teach the students in College Station. Damage and relocation costs from the storm could top $37 million, university officials said last week.
Galveston campus spokeswoman Karen Bigley said Wednesday that administrators were continuing to assess the situation and that updated figures were likely to be released this week.
"All in all, it's been incredible, and I don't think any of us anticipated this would go quite as smoothly as it did," Bigley said. "We basically rebuilt a university in a matter of days. It's no small feat."
Aggies helping Aggies
Mike Spiers, the student body president for the Galveston campus, said most students still are adjusting to their new surroundings. For the Sea Aggies, everything is different in College Station -- even something as simple as getting from an apartment to class, he said.
"In Galveston, if you were at your apartment five minutes before class, you could make it to class on time," Spiers said. "Up here, you have to give yourself a lot of time."
Other things -- such as meal plans, parking and bus routes -- also have been daunting, Spiers said. But despite the upheaval, the students are settling in, and Spiers predicted that most Galveston students would be fully adjusted by the end of the week.
Spiers said College Station Aggies have helped ease the transition. Many have helped their Galveston counterparts find classes and buildings on campus. Donation drives -- from students in College Station and others across the A&M System -- have been set up to help the Sea Aggies outfit their landlocked dorms and apartments.
"Being a fellow Ag, it really helps when you know your Ags are there to help you out in your time of need," Spiers said.
Spiers said he was working with student leaders in College Station to establish a Galveston cleanup day for student volunteers from both College Station and Galveston who want to help out on the island. More than 800 students lived off campus in Galveston, and Spiers said many of them will have to spend their weekends working to repair their residences before they can return for the spring semester. The cleanup day will focus on fixing the homes of students, faculty and staff, he said.
Though the island remains without needed infrastructure, Spiers said, he and other students find hope in the fact that the campus itself is starting to come back online.
"They're in real high spirits, and I'm real glad to see it," Spiers said of the students' morale. "I just think that's the students we have. We have amazing students. I think that really speaks a lot about their characters."
Still adjusting
The Desforgeses -- like many others on the island -- didn't think Hurricane Ike would be that bad. So they grabbed little more than a bag full of clothes when they headed to their parents' house in Arlington to wait out the storm. Saturday will mark their first return trip, though they have learned from a friend that their apartment and its contents are fine, the two said. The units below them were considered a total loss.
Their mode of transportation didn't fare as well as their apartment. The sisters shared two cars. The one they left in a Galveston garage was totaled, they said.
The Sea Aggies now are sharing a two-bedroom apartment in College Station with a friend. The complex charged them a higher rate because they wanted to sign only a three-month lease, but the Desforgeses said their parents were willing to pay extra so the sisters could live together.
The university offered to find housing for all relocated students but did not accept roommate requests.
"I was kind of excited because he was going here," Chelsea Desforges said, smiling as she pointed to her boyfriend, Adam Palcheck, 21, who transferred from Galveston to College Station at the start of the fall semester. "I thought it would be fun. Kind of like a little vacation."
All things considered, the girls said, they are glad to be in College Station for the semester. Galveston was small and could be boring, the sisters agreed. Though the people in College Station seem a little less relaxed than those on the island, the semester should be a nice change of pace, they said.
Heather Desforges said the most frustrating part was registering at the College Station campus, where the line wrapped around the building. The plight doesn't even compare to the horrors that some of their friends faced. One friend in particular, she said, stayed through the storm and went 14 days without a shower. When she finally did get to wash her hair, she used toilet water.
On Wednesday, the Desforgeses hovered at the back of a Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Rural Public Health classroom. It was 5:15 p.m. The building schedule showed that their wetlands class should have begun at 4:30 p.m. Their class schedules indicated that the class was to begin at 5 p.m. The difference didn't matter. They were the only students in the room.
The sisters admitted they might have missed an announcement canceling the class. They had a prescheduled cruise to Cozumel and couldn't cancel it or get refunds, so they missed the first few days of class.
Just another adjustment.
"I'm kind of regretting it now," Heather Desforges said of the cruise, "because I feel so lost."
