The newly opened Park West Apartments are now housing roughly 110 students from Texas A&M Galveston who evacuated their coastal campus due to Hurricane Harvey.
The hurricane has reached Category 4 status and is the first hurricane over Category 3 to hit the U.S. in over 11 years according to the National Weather Service.
A&M Galveston closed its campus yesterday due to the threat of the hurricane and advised students to evacuate the area. The students were bused from the Galveston campus to A&M-College Station and will be living temporarily in the residence halls and Park West Apartments, according to Christine Thoorsell, associate director of Residence Education.
“The TAMU Galveston staff was really looking for an opportunity where they could house all of their staff and students together and since all residence halls are pretty full, we know that Park West, which is one of the land lease properties on the Texas A&M campus has vacancies because they aren’t fully occupied yet,” Thoorsell said. “TAMU Galveston started communicating with them, and they said yes that they’d be able to put them up.”
A&M Galveston marine biology freshman Sydney Burleson said she hopes there is minimal damage to her campus.
“I’m worried about our campus,” Burleson said. “I really don’t want anything to be destroyed and I want to be able to spend my first semester there.”

Radar via National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
The last time A&M Galveston had to close its campus was in 2008 when Hurricane Ike made landfall. That year the A&M Galveston students stayed at the main campus for the entire semester. Officials are uncertain how long the students will have to stay in College Station this year and said the hardest part in transporting the students was coordinating the logistics of such an evacuation.
“It’s not just the housing, but also making sure [the students] have dining facilities and access to computer labs, the library, how to navigate the campus via the bus routes,” Thoorsell said. “It really is just a campus wide effort to make sure we are able to make our campus feel like home during their stay here.”
Daniel Grigsby, A&M Galveston civil engineering freshman, said the hardest part was having to make such a sudden move to College Station and leave many things behind.
“I literally moved in yesterday and within two hours there I was packing up and having to move here,” Grigsby said. “I wasn’t able to bring everything, so hopefully it doesn’t get destroyed.”
Amidst the worry of having to move, Branston Harris, housing coordinator for A&M Galveston Residence Life, said he hopes the students have a chance to experience what life is like for Aggies in College Station.
“I think just seeing the bigger college experience would be good for them to have,” Harris said. “I think it is a really great thing for the students to come here and experience Aggieland and experience being in College Station, seeing the sights, seeing the main campus [and] make the connections with students.”