Students will not be able to stay on the Arts, Sciences, and Engineering (AS&E) campus unless they face travel restrictions, housing insecurity, or come from a country with a severe COVID-19 risk.
Specifically, a student’s home country must have a CDC warning level of 2 or 3 and a US Department of State level of 3 and 4 in order to meet the criteria. Students facing the conditions listed above must request an exemption to stay on campus.
The new information comes from an email sent to undergraduates from Dean of the College for AS&E Jeffrey Runner on Thursday evening.
Starting March 28, only students with an exemption will have access to residence halls, Runner wrote.
Reimbursements for room and board will be issued for students not living on campus, using March 20 as the date for calculating the reimbursed charges. Runner added that while the changes will not impact financial aid packages, there will be no tuition refunds.
He urged students to get their belongings and leave by March 22. (Students can arrange a later pickup, he wrote, but Residential Life hasn’t yet announced how that will work.)
From now until March 22, Residential Life Area Offices will be open regular hours and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends.
All checkouts will be express, which means that students will need to pick up an envelope from an Area Office, fill out the necessary information, and leave the envelope with their room keys at a chosen location before leaving. The envelope can only be picked up when the Area Office is open, but the drop-off can happen at any time.
To minimize the amount of people on campus, Runner told students to “try to pack in ways that will allow you to leave campus for yourself, rather than requiring family members to assist you.”
Students who can’t return to campus, Runner wrote, will have storage options announced soon. Runner also suggested that such students reach out to ResLife to arrange for room access if a friend is packing for them.
Campus services for students who remain on campus will be limited. “This includes reduced dining options, curtailed hours at libraries and athletic facilities, limited campus activities and events,” Runner wrote. Students remaining on campus might be consolidated to a few buildings, and they are not permitted guests and visitors.
In closing the email, Runner said that more updates will be shared in coming days.
Editors Note (3/12/20): This article has been modified to reflect that students on campus may dorm in select buildings and will not be allowed to have guests.
