In September 2017, hurricanes Irma and Maria blasted through Puerto Rico and wrecked Inter American University’s campus in Arecibo and left many of its students displaced. Following the storms, student enrollment tumbled.
And with damages that total $2.3 million, the university continues to rebuild and recover. Over 170-mile-per-hour winds shattered windows in the administration building, and seven classrooms were destroyed.
“We lost power,” says Dr. Rafael Ramirez-Rivera, the university’s chancellor. “We lost internet. We lost drinking water from the faucet.”
Two years later, like most of the island’s communities and people, the campus still struggles to rebuild. Inter American University is not alone. Hurricane recovery is still underway at Puerto Rico’s other colleges and universities.
Hurricane Maria, which touched down within two weeks of Hurricane Irma’s landfall, was one of the deadliest and costliest natural disasters in U.S. history. It left nearly 3,000 people dead and thousands more displaced.
“We still have more than 20,000 houses that their roofs are blue tents,” Ramirez-Rivera says, and students who live in those tents are forced to choose between working to support their families, going to school in Puerto Rico or leaving for the U.S. mainland.
But Sarita Brown, president of Excelencia in Education — an organization that promotes Latino student achievement — says now, the story of Puerto Rico’s higher education institutions is one of “resilience and commitment.”
