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Northeastern to re-open campus in September, but will likely have to expand number of dorms and acquire lots of coronavirus test kits
By adamg on Fri, 05/08/2020 - 2:43pm
Northeastern University President Joseph Aoun announced today that the school's dormitories and classrooms will be open for the fall semester - even if that means expanding the number of buildings the school owns or rents to house students in a more socially-distancing setting and starting up "large-scale deployment of testing and contact tracing."
Aoun allowed as how campus life won't be the same as it was before the school shut its campus in March:
It will require new and innovative thinking about classroom usage, residential occupancy, dining, athletics, student activities, and other elements of campus life. Rest assured that every aspect of how the university operates is being evaluated in the context of our new reality.
For example, while we continue to believe that classroom instruction should be the norm, we will offer many large lectures in both live and recorded formats, while some of our other classes will allow for both live and remote participation. We will need to expand student housing into new buildings and communities to reduce residential density. This may include setting aside residential space to accommodate those who will need to safely self-isolate. ...
A range of new safety protocols and procedures will be put in place on our campuses. These will include use of face masks, staggered business hours, increased disinfection and cleaning, use of the SafeZone app to check into campus buildings, and large-scale deployment of testing and contact tracing. One of the lessons we have learned from other countries, is that successfully reopening society depends on widespread use of testing and contact tracing - by both public and private entities.
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Comments
Wow
That’s a pretty big step. I wonder if this decision is based on tuition/financial/admissions projections For future classes...
Budgets are tightening just
Budgets are tightening just like everywhere, otherwise all of the talk I've heard of the future academic year are quite positive.
This news may seem remarkable, but Harvard already said they would be holding a fall semester, one way or another. We've made the same decision, we're just saying that we are going to be running classes in-person as long as the conditions allow for it.
[Personal opinions, naturally.]
How do they have space for this?
How does Northeastern have enough buildings free to do this? Or are they just going to rent out all the surrounding buildings they don't own somehow?
Renting hotel rooms. Schools
Renting hotel rooms. Schools can't master lease anymore without city approval.
16,075 Foreign Students at NU alone.
If a lot of them do not show up, which many of them won't or because of the Orange Gibbon's policy on people from CHINE-A not allowing them to come, that frees up a lot of dorm space.
Something tells me BU, UMass Amherst, and a host of other schools are going to have more singles this fall.
This also might lead to some rent reductions in the Allston and Mission Hill markets.
See people, complain about high rents, and a pandemic solves your problems.
Instead of "foreign"
Maybe international is better?
I'm Ok With Foreign
My parents were foreign, not international, so there.
Don Sutton
"I never put a foreign substance on the ball. Vaseline is made in the United States."
It's closer to 3,000 full
It's closer to 3,000 full time, degree seeking undergraduates that are international (of 18,000 or so FT undergraduates.) Very few non-full time or non-undergraduate students are even considered for housing.
But yes, there are considerations being made that certain international students may not be able to physically be on our campus no matter what we can do on our end.
"Reduce residential density" - disaster for renters
Let's follow what Northeastern University means when they say "reduce residential density" for their students. They say that means they will be expanding owned and rented property in the community. So more property that would have been for local residents will now move to university/institutional ownership. Will other universities follow suit as a solution? Imagine if all the universities in Boston/Cambridge area decided to double rental holdings and expand their owned property in order to "reduce residential density" for their students. (Also, ask yourself if doubling would really be the low end of what's necessary to increase social distancing.) For local renters, this could trigger an INCREASE in rents as universities both expand and buy up or rent more properties for their students. At the exact time when many community members are finding it harder to pay their pre-Covid rent rates due to unemployment, reduced employment, furloughs, etc. This will be a disaster for renters. I don't expect the universities to give a damn about the effect on the community. Stable property taxes is all the politicians will see. The urban wealthy will quietly cheer -- more of the riff raff will have to move out as life gets harder for them. No matter that even middle class incomes won't be able to afford city living. So much the better - run all the plebes out to boost property values.
Adam, I'm going to call you
Adam, I'm going to call you on one minor detail: intention
Emphasis mine.
We are not saying that we are absolutely going to do it, but we would like to do it and we plan to do it and if there's anything in our control that we can do to make it happen, we will do it. But we're not turning the dining hall fridge into a morgue just to make on-campus classes happen.
Agreed
Intentions can change. For example - if Harvard decides to go remote for fall, and every other big-name college follows suit, there's no way that Northeastern will buck the trend.
Also, given Northeastern's many international students, many parents might be reluctant to send their kids to a country where the flu can combine with Covid 2.0 to overwhelm the medical system (and where people protest against wearing masks, boycott stores with a mandatory mask policy, etc). Missing out on those full-cost room and board dollars, and having to accommodate part-financial aid American students only, might make Northeastern reconsider.