Hurricane Rita has come and gone, and except for a few fallen tree branches and leaves, the campuses of Rice University and the University of Houston System look like they did a week ago.

"Like most of Houston proper, we escaped the full brunt of the storm," Eric Gerber, University of Houston System communications director, said. "The storm turned so we really weren't subjected to anything here. We were on the clean side of the storm."

Three of the four UH campuses resume classes Thursday, Gerber said, though UH-Victoria, roughly 130 miles southwest of Houston, will resume classes Tuesday.

"As far as I know [there was no damage] beyond just some tree branches coming down," he said. "Nothing beyond that: no flooding, no power outages."

Rice University, also highly concerned about the hurricane, incurred even less damage than the UH campuses, according to Margot Dimond, director of news and media relations.

"I'm here and it's really just some minor debris on the campus and an occasional limb from a tree down," Dimond said. "That's all I see but I've not toured the entire campus, but that's apparently all there is."

Mark Scheid, assistant to the president and head of the crisis management team at Rice, echoed Dimond's observations and said the campus is fine, save for record temperatures nearing 100 degrees.

"I only saw one good-size tree limb that went down," Scheid said. "All the rest was small twigs, small branches, a lot of leaves blown off. We only had wind up to 65 miles per hour and we only had an inch of rain."

The campus survived the storm so well, Scheid said, that Rice University will hold a regular day of classes Tuesday.

Gerber said the three UH campuses that have cancelled classes through Wednesday could have resumed regular business operations earlier, but the city requested a delay.

Houston, the fourth largest city in the nation, saw a massive exodus late last week and city leaders want to avoid similar incoming traffic issues.

"There was a major evacuation out of the whole Houston coastal area," Gerber said. "[It] sort of caused gridlock. They didn't want businesses and schools to reopen real soon because that would be more pressure on people coming back."

According to Gerber, the city is out of gasoline and other supplies, and Scheid said Texas Gov. Rick Perry designated Monday a travel day.

"We ended up having probably on the order of 70-to-75 percent of the students staying on campus or in the Houston area off campus," Scheid said. "We could've waited until Wednesday to start but we figured it's kind of silly to have 90 percent of the students waiting around for the 5-to-10 percent that can't make it back."

Scheid said most Houston area residents are ignoring the city's staggered reentry plan, and noted only two faculty members said they would not be able to return to classes Tuesday.

"It was a dud," Scheid said of the hurricane. "We were braced for much more than we got."