Schools and Universities Throw Students into Panic after telling them to Leave Campus and take Classes online amid Coronavirus Fears

Students at a growing number of US schools have been told students to leave campus in the coming weeks and take their courses online — some with only a week’s notice — as states with significant outbreaks declared a state of emergency in the past week. While the move by schools like Harvard University, Amherst College, and Smith College is meant to prevent the spread of novel coronavirus, it presents a host of issues for students who don’t have a place to go or a way to get online.

On Tuesday, Harvard told its more than 36,000 student body that they had about five days to vacate their dorm rooms. Students, required to be out of their on-campus housing by March 15, have to find new living accommodations for the foreseeable future, posing a challenge for those who don’t readily have a place to go like low-income or international students.

“The decision to move to virtual instruction was not made lightly,” Harvard President Lawrence Bacow said in a statement released on Tuesday. “The goal of these changes is to minimize the need to gather in large groups and spend prolonged time in close proximity with each other in spaces such as classrooms, dining halls, and residential buildings.”

Tomasz Wojtasik, a 21-year-old sophomore at Harvard, told Business Insider he was shocked by the news that he would have to leave campus.

“I barely kept from crying,” Wojtasik said. His parents kicked Wojtasik out a year ago because he is gay. He told Insider he has no idea where he’ll go while campus residence halls are closed.

“I’ve managed for the past summer and winter break, but now I have five days to figure out what I’m going to do,” Wojtasik said.

According to Wojtasik, some students will likely be allowed to stay on campus if they meet “extenuating circumstances,” such as being from a country designated category-3 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or  have “health or personal circumstances preventing them from leaving campus.”

Harvard University did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.

Advised to contact his student resident dean if he needed to remain on campus, Wojtasik reached out and filled out an application requesting to stay in his dorm. Until he is approved, Wojtasik will have to find another housing option as students, he said, have been “encouraged to get creative with finding friends and family to stay with.”

“I’ll have to try and find a friend to crash with essentially,” he told Insider, pointing out the uncertainty around the duration of his stay. “We have no information on whether classes will remain remote for the rest of the semester. So do I try to find an apartment only to find out in a month that I have to come back? And if I have to get an apartment, how am I supposed to work to pay for it while still completing school work? And how do I find a job that quickly?”

For international students, who according to Harvard data make up 10,000 students from more than 155 countries, finding a place to go proves to be an even harder task.

“I CAN’T go home to Jamaica, especially on such short notice,” one Harvard student wrote on Twitter, calling out the “the callous and irresponsible way that the school is handling this crisis.”

For domestic students returning home, there’s no guarantee they will have high-speed internet necessary to complete online coursework

Wojtasik said professors will use Zoom video conferencing software to hold virtual classes. But for students in some parts of the country, attending online classes might not be feasible.

 

Insider

 

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