College Classrooms Closing Amid Coronavirus Fears
Written by Jazzy T on March 12, 2020
As WNY and Upstate College students are getting ready to go home for Spring Break, SUNY, CUNY, Syracuse University, U of R and UB campus officials are now telling students to stay home and finish courses online. Read more about “Distance Learning” below.
On Wednesday, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic. (Think, smallpox and tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS).
Even though there have not been any confirmed cases of Covid-19 in our area, many students will be traveling to infected areas such as NYC, Southern California and Florida and that’s why many colleges are concerned that the virus could be brought back to campus after Spring Break.
The University of Rochester will shift to distance learning on March 18th.
Gov. Cuomo announced that SUNY and CUNY students will move to Online Class Only starting March 19th and continue for the rest of the semester.
Syracuse Vice Chancellor Michael Haynie told Syracuse.com shifting from classrooms to online learning starting March 23rd is a moral obligation:
“We’re about to launch 15,000 students out there into the world, and the idea or at least the normal routine that a week from then, they come back — that really is why we think it’s a prudent and appropriate step for us to take this action,” Haynie said.
“If you look at what we know so far about the coronavirus, young people, people the ages of most of our students, the complications from the virus really are most pronounced in older individuals,” Haynie said. “What that highlights to us is we have a moral obligation to think about the community broadly, but also our faculty and our staff.”
RIT and Nazareth College students are on Spring Break this week and they are expected to be back in the classroom on Monday.
