Dartmouth College announced this week that it will reopen its campus in September to approximately 50 percent of its student body. First-year students will be invited to live and study on campus for the entirety of the upcoming academic year. Most Dartmouth classes will remain online in a similar fashion to most college and universities taught classes in the Spring semester.
According to a local news report, Dartmouth College will reopen its campus this fall to approximately half of its 4,400 students. Students that live on campus during the upcoming academic year will be offered a single-occupancy dorm room to mitigate the spread of the Chinese virus.
In a letter to the community, Dartmouth College President Philip J. Hanlon noted that the campus environment will be quite different when classes resume in September. In addition to the single-occupancy rooms, students will also be forced to wear masks and limit social gatherings.
The reality of COVID-19 means that the campus environment will be very different this fall. There will be strict limitations on gatherings, social activities, and lectures. We will have new protocols for using campus buildings and common spaces, restricted travel with self-quarantine protocols, contact tracing, a requirement to wear face coverings everywhere but private spaces, enhanced cleaning procedures, staggered scheduling and reconfigured workspaces, and limited access to buildings. The College library will be open to the Dartmouth community of students, faculty, and staff.
Despite the return to campus, most Dartmouth courses will continue online for the fall semester. Students that attend in-person class sessions will be required to maintain six feet from the people around them.
The majority of undergraduate instruction and faculty office hours will be held remotely this fall, although some in-person classes will be offered on campus. Physical distancing requirements of 6 feet between people mean that we will have substantially reduced classroom space available to students. We pride ourselves on our commitment to teaching and we view the challenge of doing so remotely—for however long that it is required—as mission-critical.
Colleges and universities around the nation have adopted a variety of approaches to teaching this fall. Breitbart News reported in May that California State University will keep its 23 campuses closed for the fall semester.
Universities including Purdue University, North Carolina State, and Michigan State, however, have already announced plans to reopen their campuses for classes in September.
Stay tuned to Breitbart News for more campus updates.
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