Photo courtesy of anonymous USF Tampa evacuee
By Riley Benson
Around 2 p.m. Monday, the University of South Florida emailed all students that Tampa campus residence halls would close as Hurricane Milton barrels towards Tampa Bay.
With less than 24 hours’ notice, students had minimal time to find alternative accommodations.
Many took the only option USF provided: being handed a “grab-bag” full of snacks and leaving today, Oct. 8, on a BullRunner towards Jennings Middle School, along with other evacuated residential students from the St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee campuses.
Now, there are almost 300 students at the middle school, a mix of students from all USF campuses and the University of Tampa, unsure of what lies ahead.
“Nobody knows for sure when we can go back. I feel like Tom Hanks in Terminal; no clue when I can go home. They’ve said we could go on Thursday, Friday, or maybe Saturday too. Nothing is clear,” said Cameron Doom, a senior political science major based out of the Tampa campus.
The St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee campuses alerted students on Sunday, Oct. 6, that its residence halls would be closing Monday at noon and that those who couldn’t find accommodation would be relocated temporarily to the Tampa campus.
Both campuses are in mandatory evacuation zones, and the St. Petersburg residence halls have been evacuated yearly due to hurricanes since 2022. In recent years at the Tampa campus, while classes have been canceled and the campus has closed because of hurricanes, the residence halls have not been evacuated, as the campus is not in a flood zone.
Doom talked to The Crow’s Nest to let us get an inside look into what the atmosphere is like for students forced to go to Jennings.
Many students are sprawled out all over the school’s gymnasium, sleeping on a mix of blankets, sheets, comforters and air mattresses, as the military-style cots are blocked off and reserved for “special” personnel, like EMTs and police officers.
“My bed for the night is literally what I dragged off of my ‘Holly E’ bed: a comforter, as a mattress, with a sheet blanket and a fleece blanket to cover me,” Doom said. “A cot is a minimum when you’re displacing people from their homes. We’re college students. We don’t have a lot of money to get an Uber to Walmart, an upwards of $30 last time I checked, and buy a $40 mattress. I literally have $4 in my bank account.”
Duy Do, a graphic arts senior from the St. Petersburg campus, told The Crow’s Nest’s Arts and Life Editor, Mahika Kukday, that there’s specifically a room at Jennings for the St. Petersburg students, which included air mattresses, provided by the campus’ team.
Do said that in past evacuations, like for Hurricane Helene two weeks ago, the St. Petersburg campus provided air mattresses for students camped at the Tampa campus.
Upon arrival, many bathrooms weren’t stocked with sanitary supplies like hand soap, paper towels or soap for the showers, along with minimal toilet paper. Doom had to ask staff members for the bare minimum of supplies, like hand sanitizer for the bathrooms.
“They’ve been quite responsive to everything we’ve asked for: soap and paper towels. The toilet paper situation is ‘shitty’ to say the least, but other than, that amazing [service],” Doom said.
Meanwhile, the bathroom included your standard middle school locker room utilities, including communal showers. A shower curtain, acting as a divider from the rest of the bathroom, was installed a few hours into arrival.
USF President Rhea Law arrived at the shelter for a short time to talk with staff and groups of students. Doom talked to the president about the possibility of students getting refunded for the days they were forced to leave their on-campus dorms.
“[USF’s] housing contract says that we have a set price per day we pay to stay in our dorms. I emailed Andy Johnson, our director of housing, to ask if we’d be refunded on our student accounts for the days we were unable to utilize our dorms. No response,” he said.
He later brought it up with Law and was told by one of her team members that the possibility would be brought up in a leadership meeting, likely after the storm.
The school will likely continue to have power and hot meals throughout the storm, as there is a generator and the cafeteria uses gas.
Jennings Middle School is an approved Hillsborough County shelter during a hurricane, as it’s not in an evacuation zone. Jennings is not open to the public, and students wear a pink wristband during their stay to verify that they are allowed to be at the school.
USF will continue to email students updates about the status of the campuses and classes. As of right now, USF anticipates remaining closed through Thursday, Oct. 10, and reopening with remote operations and classes on Friday and Saturday, Oct. 11 and 12, although this is pending the aftermath of the storm.
