Source: Joe Raedle / Getty
The two largest historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in Texas are playing an outsized role in helping their students during a historic winter storm that hit the state with unprecedented snow, ice and frigid temperatures. Amid the chaos, Prairie View A&M University (PVAM) and Texas Southern University (TSU), in particular, are making sure their students have access to the proper resources needed to weather the storm.
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The freezing weather has hit the greater Houston area especially hard, causing residents there to go without heat after a widespread power outage that Texas politicians were busy blaming on each other instead of trying to restore electricity. For perspective, the last time Texas was this cold was more than 30 years ago in 1989.
Aside from the growing death toll attributed to the low temperatures, one of the other unfortunate byproducts of the storm has been the local water supply becoming tainted after freezing conditions caused pipes to burst. That’s resulted in a boil water order — an order irrelevant to the many residents suffering without access to the gas or electricity needed to boil the water.
So in classic community-first HBCU fashion, both PVAM and TSU have stepped up to make food and water available to their students living both on- and off-campus. And if the viral photos of bare supermarket shelves are any indication, providing those necessities was no small favor.
At PVAM — located in the city of Prairie View, north of Houston — the school has transformed parts of its campus into a “warming center” as other parts remain closed with remote and in-person classes suspended until Monday. In addition, the school was providing shelter for anyone in the city as well as its students.
Source: Texas HBCUs Step Up Amid Power Outages, Freezing From Historic Winter Storm
