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Dear Blueno Posts
Description
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Screenshots of posts from the public Facebook group "Dear Blueno," an anonymous online forum used dominantly by the Brown community to express their opinions, concerns, or other articulations.
Item names are either excerpts from posts or the posts in full.
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PNG
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"17392 - topics: coronavirus
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If our classes become digital, do we get refunded housing/meal plan payments??"
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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17392 - ...If our classes become digital, do we get refunded housing/meal plan payments??
Publisher
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Dear Blueno
Date
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March 11, 2020
housing
meal plans
move out
refunds
unverified
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35f761b93ed9dbc8ff09b5a656090274
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Brown Daily Herald
Description
An account of the resource
This collection consists of articles published by the Brown Daily Herald, the undergraduate daily student newspaper, in regards to COVID-19 at Brown.
Text
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Prior to students’ return to campus this fall, the University has upheld its policy requiring students to spend six semesters living on campus, and promised to uphold their agreement to house all students who request it. In light of COVID-19, the University has guaranteed that all students returning to live on campus will be housed “based on single room occupancy” with the goal of “de-densifying” residential spaces.
Unfortunately, since the release of Brown’s “Plan for a Healthy and Safe 2020-21” statement on July 7, the University’s commitments to “transparency” and to “developing plans with the goal of maintaining the financial well-being of students and employees” have been repeatedly broken. Specifically, as undergraduate students attempt to plan for the fall semester, the Office of Residential Life’s housing policies have been frustratingly inconsistent. According to the Undergraduate Council of Students, 41 percent of students have listed residential halls in their top four concerns about returning to campus. They are right to be concerned, according to health guidelines from both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the University. Without access to kitchens, students will be dependent on grab-and-go meals from dining halls; those with dietary restrictions face the added stress of whether or not they can trust the food they are given. Bathrooms are to be cleaned more frequently, though considerations of facilities staff hazard pay and overtime wages are absent from the administration’s public correspondences.
ResLife promised to release housing information for students on campus Aug. 10, but to date students have yet to receive their assignments. Furthermore, in correspondences to the Brown community on August 11th, the University released new plans about staggering student arrivals through September. Initially, August 10th left very little time for students to start creating their housing group’s own internal policies surrounding cleaning, guests and bathroom use. Now, students have to manage the added confusions of living in housing pods in which new people will be quarantining for fourteen days throughout September. Managing one’s housing pod is difficult in the best of circumstances. While Brown’s new arrival plans are safer in theory, the University’s inability to communicate this plan until mid-August is problematic for students who are already facing serious planning issues such as transportation to campus.
Additionally, housing assignments are made considering only one of two factors: “either the style of housing (suite/apartment or non-suite/apartment) or being assigned near another student who has mutually requested to be assigned near you.” Since ResLife cannot provide students with the ability to even anticipate — let alone plan — what their personal facilities and housing group will be, many students are finding it difficult to trust the University right now. In my own experiences living exclusively with college students in closed-loop social isolation bubbles, building trust and mutual accountability is critical to the success of the pod and necessary for maintaining mental health. It takes time, and without information about those with whom they would share high-risk spaces, many students are forced to choose between studying remotely or risk a housing situation that accommodates neither their needs nor their safety.
Even with the trimester system and the option of attending classes remotely, the University admitted in an email correspondence to rising juniors in July that they did not anticipate having the necessary space to provide students with enough single-person housing on campus. Even though they have now successfully addressed this specific issue by going back on their word to juniors seeking off-campus permission, each single room still does not have the necessary facilities like a private kitchen and bathroom that would be necessary, according to the CDC, to fully prevent spreading the virus amongst asymptomatic carriers.
Furthermore, the University has yet to release a comprehensive explanation of how self-isolation housing will quarantine potentially infected students. The University claims that students, when waiting for test results or quarantining, will be moved to alternative housing which “should at a minimum include a single room with its own adjoining bathroom,” though information on where these rooms are, and how students will safely move remain absent. Still, the details released on August 11th in the University’s “Campus Safety Policy” about students’ isolation practices remain vague, mentioning that students will be “directed to ‘isolate’ from others” and that multiple services like Dining, facilities, and EMS have “partnered to ensure that students are supported.” No further plans have been released regarding potential evacuation or outbreak containment.
The University claims to “follow at all times guidance from the CDC and RIDOH,” yet the lack of single-user bathrooms and the overall absence of clear plans for students who need to quarantine blatantly undermines this claim. Multiple students believe that reopening campus under the current plan will inevitably go awry, even with staggered arrivals.
To date, ResLife has not told students about the ratio of students to bathrooms, or how the minor access to kitchen storage will be organized. Understandably skeptical of on-campus housing, rising juniors lined up for the newly rolled out off-campus permission waitlist in June in the hopes of bypassing the stressors associated with living on campus. Therefore, some students were planning to return to Providence to live off-campus regardless of whether or not they had permission to do so.
Without a clear date on when they would be given or denied off-campus permission from the June waitlist, rising juniors struggled to make any plans. Volunteers at ResLife answered multiple calls without the authority to release any information and couldn’t provide students with any number more specific than that “over 350” students were on this waitlist. They were also unable to assist students in planning by giving them any sense of how many people might be allowed off, though the creation and maintenance of such a list certainly implies that at least some people would be granted permission.
Shockingly, On July 24th, ResLife emailed students on the waitlist that no one would be given off-campus permission at that time. The Location of Study Form was closed, and they were automatically assigned to live on campus. These juniors received an email from ResLife containing the following:
“…we were uncertain — prior to the deadline for submission of the Fall 2020 Location of Study Form — if we would be able to meet the demand for on-campus housing among all students who require it … For this reason, we opened a new waitlist for students to indicate interest in off-campus permission. Because we now know that we will be able to meet the requirements both for students covered by the housing requirement and seniors who have requested on campus housing, we have closed this waitlist and are not extending additional off-campus permission.”
Students were not informed until after committing to their preferences that the new off-campus waitlist was created to inform ResLife of whether or not their on-campus capacity would be filled. At this point, all Juniors who were denied off-campus permission were automatically re-assigned to on-campus housing, as they had been unable to mark “attending remotely” as their second choice preference. As such, some students decided to simply deal with living on campus, while others fought through multiple phone calls with ResLife volunteers to re-registered as remote students so that they could either live at home, or live in Providence secretly.
On August 11th, ResLife once again changed their policy without warning. All students previously on the June waitlist have now been granted off-campus permission. Less than a month before classes begin, students must reorganize their off-campus living situations, which includes re-negotiating sublet situations, and having tough conversations about which lessees will return, in order to abide by the city’s restrictions on college students living together.
The multiple miscommunications about off-campus permission by the University have had grave effects on students’ financial well being and planning stress. Students have a time-sensitive need to prepare for a living situation that keeps them safe from COVID-19, but they have both lacked critical information on the nature of their assigned university housing and have had the University go back on their word twice, making it nearly impossible to plan ahead.
Furthermore, students have discussed in online forums that granting widespread off-campus permission can have detrimental long-term effects on the gentrification and rent prices of the Fox Point area. Many have mentioned this as a reason for choosing to study remotely instead of trying to get off-campus permission, though such considerations for the Providence community have been absent from University correspondences.
Brown’s housing policies make it unnecessarily difficult for students to follow health guidelines. The University’s contradictory communications about students living off campus is creating additional financial and mental strain. In order to both contain the spread of COVID-19 and support the University’s financial priorities, Brown is demanding blind cooperation from its students without extending the trust necessary for a productive relationship with the institution. We will all be signing attestations that we will “follow required public health practices, and that (we) understand that disregard of public health practices is a conduct violation that could result in removal from campus.” How could we possibly follow required public health practices if the University will not allow us what we need to do so in terms of on-campus self-isolation? How can students properly plan ahead to live responsibly to stop the spread of COVID-19? I predict that when an outbreak does occur on campus, policies like these will be used to avoid the University’s liability and instead blame the behavior of students who tried to live within the administration’s unrealistic restrictions.
Beth Pollard ’21 can be reached at beth_pollard@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
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The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Online newspaper article
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Pollard ’21: Flawed housing policies and Brown’s broken commitments to transparency in communications
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Beth Pollard
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Brown Daily Herald
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Brown Daily Herald
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August 12, 2020
CDC
Dining Hall
dining services
housing
housing complaints
off campus
op-ed
quarantine
Res Life
RIDOH
UCS
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Brown Daily Herald
Description
An account of the resource
This collection consists of articles published by the Brown Daily Herald, the undergraduate daily student newspaper, in regards to COVID-19 at Brown.
Text
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On Aug. 11, President Christina Paxson P’19 announced “modifications” to the University’s original fall 2020 plans released on July 7 (though the term “reversal” is more appropriate in my view). This announcement came the day after students were supposed to (but didn’t) receive their housing information, less than a week before the start of the pre-registration add/drop period and, most glaringly, less than three weeks before students were supposed to arrive on College Hill beginning Aug. 29. Ultimately, I support this decision, as I believe it is in the best interest of safety for students and the greater Providence community. But the suddenness of President Paxson’s recent reversal, juxtaposed against her April 26 op-ed for the New York Times, raises questions about whether she actually prioritized safety before.
Many other schools were putting safety first weeks ago through decisive actions and clear communications. Several institutions in New England that had intended to reopen in person have since backtracked and will be offering all fall 2020 courses online, such as Berklee College of Music and Boston Conservatory in Boston on July 22, as well as Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, on Aug. 5. Plenty of other schools along the East Coast have made similar decisions, including Princeton, Georgetown University, George Washington University, Johns Hopkins University and American University. Brown University stands out as having reversed course and deciding to start the semester all-online only after many other peer institutions had already decided to do so.
The reversal casts the viability of the University’s original plan into deep doubt. The need for a new plan seems to be an implicit admission that the University was unable to keep students safe under its previous plan. While Brown’s decision now appears to be the best option for keeping our community safe, the fact that the University’s reversal follows the decisions of many other schools raises a sobering question of whether or not safety, in Paxson’s adamance for reopening, had been a top priority up to this point. The University may have made this new, last-minute decision in the true interest of safety, but perhaps it is simply following its peer institutions because not doing so would be otherwise indefensible.
Paxson’s op-ed is perhaps the best example of her original commitment to reopening with little regard for whether the environment is actually safe. Paxson titled her piece in a way that speaks for itself: “College Campuses Must Reopen in the Fall. Here’s How We Do It.” The opinion piece focused on the economic harm that could be caused by not reopening college campuses, whereas the term “safely” was used a mere three times, suggesting that safety may not be Paxson’s guiding principle for reopening. Interestingly, Paxson makes her argument as if she were an infectious diseases expert, when in fact she is a health and family economist.
More importantly, the University’s messaging around safety and how it would have responded to safety concerns under the previous plan have become even less clear in light of this new change. “Colleges and universities must be able to safely handle the possibility of infection on campus while maintaining the continuity of their core academic functions,” Paxson wrote in her April op-ed. Furthermore, Paxson wrote, “Our duty now is to marshal the resources and expertise to make it possible to reopen our campuses, safely, as soon as possible.” If this were true, it would mean that a safe reopening, according to Paxson, is achievable; all an institution would need to do is simply take the proper steps. Therefore, the University’s last-minute decision to not reopen campus in September is indicative of one or both of the following: Either Brown failed in its planning for a safe reopening, or Paxson, a health economist but not a health care professional, exaggerated and overstated the realm of possibility for students to safely return to college campuses in the age of COVID-19.
What has changed in the state of Rhode Island since July 7, the day that Brown announced its fall 2020 decision? The seven-day average of reported deaths due to COVID-19 has remained in the low single digits since early July and has even been in consistent decline since then. It is also true that Rhode Island’s number of new, daily reported cases is significantly higher than it was on July 7. Paxson did note in a June 23 faculty meeting that she would reverse course in August if conditions worsened sufficiently. However, if we follow Paxson’s logic in her op-ed, this increase in rate of cases shouldn’t matter as long as the University can “safely handle the possibility of infection on campus,” which, as Paxson indicated, “universities must be able” to do. There seems to be a discrepancy between what Paxson promised in her op-ed and what would actually constitute a safe way forward. Paxson also maintained in her op-ed that universities’ plans should not involve sending students home in response to “upticks or resurgences in infections.” The University is clearly shifting, either for a month or for a semester, to remote learning, with the situation in Rhode Island having “deteriorated” within the past few weeks. Perhaps the University is hoping to avoid this problem of sending students home by not allowing students to return to campus in the first place, but this once again reveals a flaw in Paxson’s op-ed argument: The University is no longer living up to her confident claims that campuses will be able to safely reopen this fall.
Last-minute decisions and a lack of transparency provide for little student flexibility, and these patterns of action among University administration are not new: Brown’s reopening plan was announced on July 7, just five weeks ago, and students were asked to hastily make a decision as to whether or not they wanted to return to campus by July 15, just four weeks ago. Likewise, undergraduate students intending to live in University housing were told that they would receive housing information by Aug. 10, but the Division of Campus Life quietly changed this to the week of Aug. 10. Three weeks prior to the beginning of a semester is when universities and their students should normally be making their final preparations for the beginning of the semester. But instead, by pushing a necessary decision to the last minute, the University has confused and deeply stressed students. Many more last-minute decisions are likely to follow, and there appears to be no end in sight, harming the almost 85 percent of students who had been preparing to return to campus.
I am a rising senior, and even with my occasional criticisms, I have loved my time at Brown. Personally, this decision is disappointing, effectively eliminating my senior year experience. But as much as I want to return to campus and attend in-person classes, I am glad that Paxson and the University finally seem to have come to their senses, making safety their priority by taking the most extreme step needed to protect the community: keeping our campus population as small as possible. But this decision and its context, based in Paxson’s apparent newfound interest in safety, highlights the University’s conspicuous patterns of overpromising, underdelivering and turning its back on students, especially those facing, in Paxson’s own words, “financial, practical and psychological barriers as they try to learn remotely.”
Poom Andrew Pipatjarasgit ’21 is a concentrator in anthropology, French and Francophone studies and Latin American and Caribbean studies. He misses College Hill dearly and can be reached at poom_pipatjarasgit@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
Original Format
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Online newspaper article
Dublin Core
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Pipatjarasgit ’21: President Paxson, since when has safety been your priority?
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Poom Andrew Pipatjarasgit
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Brown Daily Herald
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Brown Daily Herald
Date
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August 14, 2020
Christina Paxson
fall 2020
housing
Online Classes
op-ed
pre-registration
updated fall reopening plan
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Brown Daily Herald
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This collection consists of articles published by the Brown Daily Herald, the undergraduate daily student newspaper, in regards to COVID-19 at Brown.
Text
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The University is implementing a “phased approach” to in-person undergraduate instruction and student returns to campus in light of the shifting public health landscape, according to the Healthy Brown website.
As part of this approach, all undergraduate courses will be taught remotely until the week of Oct. 5, meaning in-person teaching will resume at least two weeks later than initially planned — or not at all.
A limited number of students will be allowed back on campus prior to this date, as part of phase one of the fall term. Most undergraduates will likely be invited back to campus in phase two. The University will make a decision by Sept. 11 about proceeding with phase two or shifting to a fully remote semester.
Students invited to campus for phase two of reopening may choose to continue to study remotely, and faculty members may choose to teach their courses remotely if they have health concerns even if in-person classes begin in phase two. Employees who are able to continue their work remotely in the coming months will do so, according to the Healthy Brown website.
Graduate and medical students will still return to campus before Sept. 7 for in person instruction in most cases, Paxson wrote.
Undergraduate students living off-campus are “discouraged from returning to campus until late September,” Paxson wrote.
Public health conditions
The beginning of the second phase will depend on whether the in-state severity of the virus has sufficiently declined.
“If by September 11, COVID-19 cases in Rhode Island have declined from their current level over a 14-day period and the number of students who test positive for COVID-19 is sufficiently low, then we will follow our current plan to offer many smaller undergraduate courses (with no more than 20 students) in person beginning on October 5,” President Christina Paxson P’19 wrote in an Tuesday email to community members.
“If these conditions are not met by September 11, the remainder of the semester will be remote,” she wrote.
Undergraduates who live in environments that are unsafe or unconducive to remote study, who have planned research and laboratory work or who cannot return home because of international status will be able to apply to return to residence halls before Labor Day.
Paxson’s email follows a wave of announcements from institutions across the country who have altered plans to bring students back to campus — or reversed those plans altogether. Howard University and Princeton University were among the institutions that announced they will be moving completely online for the fall semester last week. In their decisions, both cite difficulty in quarantine procedures for students, health risks for surrounding communities and diminished quality of on-campus experience.
Following months of successful efforts to reduce the number of coronavirus cases in the state, new infections began to gradually increase over the past month. Governor Gina Raimondo announced the extension of Phase 3 and a reduction in size of social gatherings to 15 people on July 29.
“It is unclear whether cases will decline or continue to rise in the coming week,” Paxson wrote. “We must confront the reality that bringing students back in smaller numbers is the safer course,” she added.
Academics, campus life
This newly-adopted phased approach to the start of in-person instructions does not impact the tri-semester model announced last month, Paxson wrote. “The expectation is that first-year students will still arrive for the spring term and continue to the summer term,” she added.
The pre-registration process will continue as planned, with students receiving their initial course registrations on Aug. 14 and the add/drop period following from Aug. 17 to Sept. 22. Students can order physical or digital course materials through the Brown Bookstore website beginning Aug. 24.
From Aug. 22 to Sept, 15, students living both on- and off-campus will be expected to adhere to the University’s quiet period. During this time, students are “expected to remain in their residents halls except for a limited number of specific essential activities,” wrote Eric Estes, Vice President for Campus Life, and Rashid Zia, Dean of the College, in a campus-wide email Tuesday.
During this time the University will be following quarantine requirements put in place by the Rhode Island Department of Health. This includes “wearing masks, social distancing, testing, contact tracing, and limiting the size of social gatherings for attendees and especially hosts,” Estes and Zia wrote. Failure to comply with these requirements will be considered a violation of the University Code of Student Conduct.
The new staggered arrival plan means previous housing requests by students to live with friends on campus no longer apply. “Returning to campus before Labor Day will invalidate any prior requests for specific neighbors unless they also apply for and receive permission to move in at the end of August,” Estes and Zia wrote. Students who return in the first phase will likely be reassigned to a new room upon the return of the remaining students in the second phase depending on the public health situation.
Original Format
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Online newspaper article
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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Brown undergraduate classes will be fully online until at least Oct. 5
Creator
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Allie Reed, Olivia George, and Jack Walker
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Brown Daily Herald
Publisher
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Brown Daily Herald
Date
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August 11, 2020
Eric Estes
fall 2020
fall on campus
housing
Online Classes
pre-registration
quiet period
Rashid Zia
trimester system
updated fall reopening plan
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Brown Daily Herald
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This collection consists of articles published by the Brown Daily Herald, the undergraduate daily student newspaper, in regards to COVID-19 at Brown.
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College students across the country are preparing for an academic year like no other: masks in near-empty lecture halls, regular nasal swab testing and no large campus gatherings.
For the limited number of students who will be permitted to return to campus in late August, healthy and safe dorm conditions are thought to be non-negotiable. But some students living in Vartan Gregorian Quadrangle (New Dorm) over recent months say living conditions have been anything but.
Ninety-six students currently live on campus, according to Tracy Mansour P’22, director of Residential Operations at the Office of Residential Life. In March, The Herald reported that over 300 students would reside on campus for the remainder of the semester. At the time, students remained in the dorms assigned to them at the beginning of the semester, but were soon consolidated to select buildings.
Of those students on campus now, 29 are residing in Block A and 10 in Block B of New Dorm.
The Herald interviewed 10 students who have lived or are currently living in the buildings since the COVID-19 pandemic closed campus. They painted a murky picture of inconsistent living conditions, irregular communication between students and staff and mixed levels of confidence in the University as the fall semester approaches.
“The safety of our students, staff, and members of the campus community is of paramount importance to Facilities Management,” Assistant Vice President for Facilities Operations Paul Armas wrote in an email to The Herald.
While some students were satisfied with their accommodations, others shared concerns about the cleanliness of communal spaces and recounted troubling interactions between students and staff.
Three students, all of whom are international and have been living in New Dorm since late March, agreed to speak with The Herald only on the condition of anonymity due to fear of personal repercussions. All three said they have been taking strict coronavirus precautions, only to feel let down by the living conditions offered by the University since it closed its doors to the majority of the students.
“I’m trying my best to stay calm,” one student said. “I just don’t feel safe here anymore.”
‘Spiders, Worms, Flies and Hair’
New Dorm is composed of a mixture of rooms with private bathrooms and four-bedroom suites clustered around communal living spaces. The Office of Residential Life told students their rooms would be cleaned prior to their arrival. Some students found their rooms cleaned and sanitized, but others were not so lucky.
Liz Kaplan ’22 opened the door of her suite to find it filled with relics of the rooms’ previous residents: stacks of newspapers, scattered alcohol bottles, crusty toothpaste and mysterious stains splashed around the sink.
“Just disgusting,” Kaplan said. “That’s really the only way I can describe it.”
And problems persisted past move-in, the students said. Communal bathrooms and kitchens have been mucky and smelly.
The three students who requested anonymity, all of whom still live in New Dorm, outlined some of the conditions together in a June 9 email to ResLife entitled, “Spiders, Worms, Flies and Hair.” Of the two bathrooms on their floor, one shower had no hot water and the one that did had a hair-clogged drain and dozens of worm-like crawling creatures, the students wrote.
“It is causing us a lot of stress and anxiety, so hopefully there’s something that you can do to help us get rid of the bugs and hair,” read the email, which was reviewed by The Herald.
To date, ResLife has not responded to the email.
ResLife told students who had been approved to remain in residence halls for the remainder of the semester that “Our goal is to provide a housing configuration so that no more than two students share a bathroom,” according to a March email reviewed by The Herald.
But eight students said that they suspect they had shared a bathroom with many more — sometimes seven or eight other students — at some point during their time in New Dorm.
In an email to The Herald, Mansour wrote that the ratio established for bathroom usage was two students per bathroom fixture. “The per fixture ratio means that no more than two students are assigned to a particular toilet, shower, or sink,” she added. Mansour did not explain the discrepancy between this and the March email to students.
The state of the kitchen and bathroom eventually prompted Kaplan to request to move buildings. After a three-week back-and-forth with ResLife, Kaplan was granted a room with a private bathroom and kitchen in Barbour Hall.
“I understand they have a high volume of emails right now,” Kaplan added. “But I just feel that you shouldn’t have to fight to have liveable housing situations.”
Unmasked workers in and out
The students said the bathroom has been cleaner in recent weeks. And they’ve adjusted to the odd bug here and there, as well as the lack of air conditioning and unreliable hot water. But they added that staff behavior has them feeling perpetually on edge.
Students said they lost count of the number of staff members — University employees and third party contractors — circulating through the dorms, making it difficult to know at any time how many people they might encounter, and how many were or were not wearing masks.
Half the interviewed students described incidents of unmasked staff members congregating in hallways or unexpectedly entering their dorm rooms without notice.
Staff are required to wear masks on campus unless an exception applies, Armas wrote in an email to The Herald. “And if any student has a concern about non-compliance,” he added, “they are encouraged to be in touch with Facilities.”
University officials said they have been taking all the right precautions and trying to balance the need to ready the dorms for the upcoming semester while maintaining a safe environment for students continuing to live on campus through the summer months.
“Staff have been working at Brown since the very beginning of the pandemic to ensure continued services to students and a healthy fall return to campus,” Armas wrote in an email to The Herald.
Facilities Management circulated a notice to all New Dorm residents last week informing students that they would be conducting repairs in Block A and B — including in occupied rooms — on weekdays for the rest of the month, from noon to 9:00 P.M. or later.
“Additional check-points have been put in place to ensure notification has occured before any work in residence halls commences,” Mansour wrote in an email to The Herald.
But efforts to prepare the rooms for incoming students have left current residents feeling vulnerable.
Thousands of miles away from their parents, students don’t want to take any chances that could lead to infection. “We do not have any family here,” one student said. “If we get sick, there is no one here to take care of us.”
One morning, the student was woken up by the sound of a Facilities staff member entering her suite. When she asked him where his mask was, he lifted up the neck of his T-shirt to cover his nose and mouth. “It’s here,” he said.
‘Trying their best’
Not all students have voiced similar complaints. Mahira Farhin ’23 said that her overall experience in New Dorm had been “pretty good.” Because of the volume of take-out students were eating, trash quickly piled up in common spaces. But she said there wasn’t much the University could do about it.
“I think the school is trying their best,” she said.
“A lot of it did have to do with students not taking their trash to the trash room and not cleaning up after themselves,” Kaplan said.
Dhiraj Khanal ’23 was “initially skeptical” about the level of hygiene obtainable in a student dorm building. It’s difficult to shake the knowledge that half a dozen students are sharing the same facilities during the pandemic, Khanal said. But for the most part, he has not seen any problems.
Mohammed Akel ’23 was handed an assortment of cleaning supplies when he moved into his room. “It was a nice gesture,” he said. Akel’s room has a private bathroom which he is in charge of keeping clean. He said he has not noticed any insect-related problems. Though he rarely uses common spaces, he said he regularly notices cleaners working, all of whom have been wearing masks.
One morning, he too was woken when a staff member opened his door. “I think they just had the wrong room,” Akel said. “I think it was an innocent mistake.”
All students who voiced concerns about living conditions said they do not blame individual staffers. Rather, they are frustrated by persistently infrequent and unclear lines of communication between Residential Life, Facilities and students living on campus.
The year ahead
The three anonymous students concerned about their New Dorm living conditions shared their experiences with Zane Ruzicka ’23, Undergraduate Council of Students campus life chair. “He was the only person who listened to us.”
Ruzicka arranged a meeting with two Facilities administrators, which took place Aug. 4, to voice the concerns of the New Dorm students. “Leaving the meeting,” one student said, “I felt heard.”
Ruzicka hopes to work collaboratively with ResLife and Facilities, to ensure that other students won’t endure the same unsanitary conditions or the feeling that their concerns have been ignored.
“I am pleased that we are doing all we can to ensure a healthy return to campus in the fall,” Armas wrote in an email to The Herald.
A limited number of students are due to return to their dorm rooms in less than a month, while the broader student population may return in less than two months if public health conditions allow. The experiences of some current residents over recent months has left them nervous for the months ahead.
“If they can’t make it work for us,” one student said, “how can it work for thousands of people?”
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Dublin Core
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As fall semester nears, students already on campus voice serious concerns about living conditions
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Brown Daily Herald
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Brown Daily Herald
Date
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August 13, 2020
housing
housing complaints
masks
Remaining on Campus
Res Life
testing
UCS
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47bd920afa79134214bffea19afbb105
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Today@Brown
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This collection captures the different events announced on Today@Brown, a daily email received by all members of Brown, as screenshots.
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This webinar provides an opportunity for returning Brown University undergraduate students to hear from staff in the Office of Residential Life and Dining Service and ask questions about the Fall 2020 opening.
This meeting will be conducted via Zoom video conferencing in a webinar format to ensure the capacity to host a large number of attendees. You will be invited to submit questions in advance through the registration form, and participants also may raise questions during the meetings through a moderated question-and-answer forum.
A personal link to the webinar will be sent via email to those who register.
Dublin Core
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Healthy Brown Webinar | Housing & Dining
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University Event & Conference Service
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Today@Brown
Date
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July 10, 2020
dining services
fall 2020
fall on campus
Healthy Brown
housing
virtual events
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a0072235a24b6132635581883735b030
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Brown Daily Herald
Description
An account of the resource
This collection consists of articles published by the Brown Daily Herald, the undergraduate daily student newspaper, in regards to COVID-19 at Brown.
Text
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Updated 1:10 p.m., July 16, 2020
To supplement the supply of on-campus housing and allow for a de-densified campus during the upcoming academic year, the University has agreed to one-year leases at four off-campus locations in Providence.
The University has leased units at 257 Thayer Apartments, River House, 95 Chestnut Street and Chestnut Commons at 85 Chestnut St., according to University Spokesperson Brian Clark. The University will be assigning some students, primarily seniors, to these off-campus apartments, according to Residential Life’s Fall 2020 Opening website.
The residences are “all within reasonable walking distance to existing shuttle stops,” Clark wrote in an email to The Herald.
In total, the leases will cover approximately 220 beds, with the number of beds per location ranging from 30 to 70, Clark wrote. Apartment-style units include studios and one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments. Some of the units will be fully furnished, and the University will provide furnishings in other cases.
The units will be assigned and billed as if they are on-campus housing, but students living there may be subject to additional policies implemented by the private property managers. The cost of housing at Brown for the 2020-2021 academic year was set at $9,774 — a 3.76 percent increase from the previous academic year — at the Corporation’s February meeting.
Clark said that “the financial terms of our leases, on these or any other leases for Brown, is not information that we’d share publicly.”
Students with a minimum semester level of five may request assignment to a Brown-leased off-campus apartment. Assignments will prioritize higher semester-level, according to the Fall 2020 Location of Study form and housing questionnaire. In the housing questionnaire, students may also list up to three other students that they would like to live near as preferred neighbors. Students are required to submit this form indicating their location of study, as well as their housing and meal plan preferences for the upcoming academic year by 11:59 p.m. Wednesday, July 15.
Approximately half of the University’s on-campus housing will be in use in the fall semester, according to the Reslife Fall 2020 website. Students living on campus will be placed in singles to reduce building density and enable proper social distancing measures amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Housing assignments for the fall are for one semester only, The Herald previously reported. It was not immediately clear if students in the Brown-leased spaces would only be placed in those accommodations for the fall.
Returning students will be notified of their housing assignments by Aug. 10, and students will move onto campus on a staggered schedule between Aug. 29 and Sept. 1.
Clarification: A previous version of this article noted that University Spokesperson Brian Clark declined to comment on the financial terms of the University’s leases. In fact, Clark said that the financial terms of the leases is not information that the University would share publicly.
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Online newspaper article
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Brown secures one-year leases at four off-campus Providence locations for upcoming academic year
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Kayla Guo
Source
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Brown Daily Herald
Publisher
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Brown Daily Herald
Date
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July 15, 2020
Brian Clark
class of 2021
class of 2022
fall 2020
housing
spring 2021
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Dublin Core
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Brown Daily Herald
Description
An account of the resource
This collection consists of articles published by the Brown Daily Herald, the undergraduate daily student newspaper, in regards to COVID-19 at Brown.
Text
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On July 7, Brown undergraduate students received an email from the College regarding academic and campus life logistics in the age of coronavirus; students were also notified of the Fall 2020 Location of Study Form, where they are required to indicate their location of study, housing plans and meal plan selection. This message supplemented President Christina Paxson’s P’19 more general announcement regarding the University’s 2020-21 academic year plans.
The July 15 deadline for the Fall 2020 Location of Study Form gives undergraduate students only nine days, from the time they were notified of this requirement, to make “a final decision,” as explained in the email. Nine days. That’s less time than a wedding invitee is typically given to respond to an invitation. Academic planning, advising and individual circumstances are all student considerations that make this timeline and short notice unreasonable.
What classes will be offered, who will be teaching them and which format for delivery of instruction will be used? For the coming academic year, the answers to these questions, according to the College’s email, will not be definitively known until July 27, almost two weeks after the form is required to be submitted. In normal semesters, students typically don’t have to worry about which classes will be offered when deciding whether or not to come back to Brown or take a leave; this is because every semester, there is usually plenty of certainty in regards to how courses will look. But these are not normal times, and the inability to have definitive answers about course offerings can make academic planning difficult for many students. The hope for some in-person classes may be one of several deciding factors for students weighing their options to come back to Providence or stay home; other students may decide they want to avoid hybrid instruction entirely. Through emails to concentrators, some academic units, such as the Department of Computer Science and the Department of History, have individually released lists of their course offerings that contain more detail than the information originally included in the provisional course list provided by the Dean of the College, Rashid Zia ’01. But in the absence of a complete course catalog, most students likely do not have enough information to make a decision.
The University’s incredibly tight timeline also puts students in an unfortunate position because it leaves little room for undergraduates to seek guidance from the resources that Brown has in place. Advising is a hallmark of the Brown undergraduate experience, and it comes in many forms: advising deans, support deans, concentration advisors, trusted faculty members and student peer advisors. Students are required to meet with an advisor (faculty members or in some cases, a dean) at critical decision points in their undergraduate journey; these include course registration for the first three semesters, declaring a concentration, pursuing a special curricular program and declaring a leave of absence, just to name a few. The upcoming academic year is a critical decision point for students, and yet, there is most likely not enough time for most students facing decisions about leave or locations of study to meet with deans or their academic advisors. Several academic advising deans are out of the office, taking some well-deserved time off. And the others have unimaginably full calendars. Given the University’s many recent commitments to strengthen academic advising, such as reducing faculty teaching loads and implementing a more robust first-year advising program called 1st Year @ Brown, it is quite ironic that this fast-approaching deadline will likely make it impossible for all students to meet with an advisor or dean if they wish to do so.
For any student, determining how to spend the next semester or two is incredibly difficult; this pandemic has created uncertainties that even the best health officials cannot work through. But this decision-making process is undoubtedly even more difficult for first-generation and low-income students, students with disabilities or complex health needs and international students. And for these students, the timeframe for consulting sufficient authorities in order to make the best academic and personal choice may be even more unreasonable. Each student’s situation is different, but students grappling with particularly challenging circumstances will likely need to seek the advice of their advisors beyond College Hill, whether they be medical providers, religious leaders, government officials, family members or career counselors, and of course, their advisors at Brown, including their peers, faculty members and deans. It may be impossible to get ahold of some of these individuals on short notice, in the middle of a pandemic that affects each of us differently. And while this list may seem long, its length reflects the deliberation that many students in more complex situations must put into making such a critical life decision as this one.
I understand that the University needs enough time to move forward in its planning. But the University’s needs should not come at the expense of students’ needs for enough time to move forward in their planning. The flood of information is difficult enough for most students to parse through — and it is in no one’s best interests to make plans based on hurriedly collected data. Asking students to hastily make binding decisions about their academic careers, when so much remains uncertain, is unfair. The University must give students the time to properly decide what is best for them, including the decision process for completing the Fall 2020 Location of Study Form.
Poom Andrew Pipatjarasgit ’21 is a concentrator in anthropology, French and Francophone studies, and Latin American and Caribbean studies. He is currently stressed out trying to make a decision for himself and can be reached at poom_pipatjarasgit@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
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Pipatjarasgit ’21: Brown took its time. Why can’t students do the same?
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Poom Andrew Pipatjarasgit
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Brown Daily Herald
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Brown Daily Herald
Date
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July 10, 2020
fall 2020
fall on campus
housing
Online Classes
op-ed
Rashid Zia
U-FLi
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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Brown Daily Herald
Description
An account of the resource
This collection consists of articles published by the Brown Daily Herald, the undergraduate daily student newspaper, in regards to COVID-19 at Brown.
Text
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Returning undergraduate students must submit housing and meal plan preferences by July 15, according to an email from Dean of the College Rashid Zia ’01 and Vice President for Campus Life Eric Estes. Students also received financial aid packages today, so that award amounts may inform their decisions about the coming academic year.
Both notifications follow the University’s Tuesday morning announcement of a tri-semester model for the upcoming academic year. Students will enroll in two out of the three terms offered, and campus life will be shifted to support social distancing and public health measures necessary to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus, The Herald previously reported.
Housing
Given the University’s plan to house students in de-densified, single-occupancy residential arrangements, housing requests and groups formed in the first phase of the housing lottery this spring will change accordingly. In place of housing group formations, students may select one other student they would like to be placed near as part of a housing questionnaire, according to the Housing Assignment FAQs on the Office of Residential Life website.
Housing assignments will be made according to semester-level priority, and assignments for the fall are for one semester only — students living on campus should be prepared to move out or change residences at the end of the fall. Juniors and seniors who did not already have off-campus living permission may also request on the form to be placed onto the off-campus permission waitlist.
Returning students will be notified of their housing assignments by Aug. 10, according to the email. Students will move onto campus on a staggered schedule between Aug. 29 and Sept. 1. No more than two people may accompany a student to campus during move-in.
A positive case of COVID-19 on campus will not lead to a full shutdown of campus operations, President Christina Paxson P’19 said in a news briefing Tuesday afternoon. “We are prepared to deal with illness, and we think it’s likely there will be some cases of illness,” she said.
Academics
In their email, Zia and Estes attached a “provisional, partial” course list for the upcoming academic year. Academic departments currently plan to offer more than 800 courses in the fall. Not all advanced course requirements will be available each semester, Paxson noted during the news briefing. Many will be offered only in the fall in order to accommodate concentration requirements for upperclassmen.
Students will be able to review courses, delivery modes and schedules in Courses@Brown by July 27, and course pre-registration for the fall will begin Aug. 5. Shopping period will take place remotely, according to the Healthy Brown website. Classes will be offered online-only between Sept. 9 — when classes begin in the fall — and Sept. 15.
Courses with 20 or more students will be held remotely, and all classes will have a remote participation option to accommodate students completing coursework from beyond College Hill.
Zia and Estes also noted that international students holding F-1 visas will receive more information from Global Brown later this week in light of a recent modification to the Student and Exchange Visitor Program.
The SEVP change, which was announced July 6, prohibits international students with F-1 and M-1 visas from studying in the United States if their course load is fully remote. Under a hybrid model of teaching such as the University’s, international students must certify that they are taking the “minimum number of online classes required to make normal progress in their degree program,” according to a news release from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“We’re going to have to offer very good advising to our international students to make sure that the curriculum they put together makes it possible for them to stay in the country,” Paxson said during the news briefing. “We’ll make sure our students won’t have to leave unless they absolutely have to or unless they want to.”
Financial aid
The Office of Financial Aid has determined awards and eligibility for the upcoming academic year, and will continue to work with students and families to finalize plans, Dean of Financial Aid Jim Tilton wrote in an email to students receiving aid from the University. Eligible students can view their financial aid awards in Banner Self-Service, according to the email from Zia and Estes.
The aid packages were not released prior to the announcement of the revised academic calendar, since they depended on the shape of the coming academic year, Tilton wrote in an email to The Herald prior to the finalization of the tri-semester plan.
Tuition fees will remain the same, Paxson said at the news briefing. The “value of education is very high” under a majority-remote model of instruction, regardless of revisions to the academic calendar, Paxson said.
Original Format
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Online newspaper article
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Housing, academic modifications announced for fall 2020
Subject
The topic of the resource
Returning students must indicate housing, meal plan preferences by July 15
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Li Goldstein and Kayla Guo
Source
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Brown Daily Herald
Publisher
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Brown Daily Herald
Date
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July 7, 2020
Christina Paxson
Eric Estes
fall 2020
financial aid
housing
International Students
Jim Tilton
Online Classes
Rashid Zia
reopening
Res Life
shopping period
trimester system