Princeton Making Exceptions for Students Who Can’t Leave Campus amid Coronavirus

As universities across the U.S. order students to pack up and leave their dorms in the name of social distancing, schools like Princeton University are working to help students unable to go elsewhere.

The New Jersey Ivy League school told students that they must leave campus by 5 p.m. on Thursday due to coronavirus — a timeline that gave them a full week to back up their belongings, arrange their travel and say their goodbyes.

But according to Dean of the College Jill Dolan, the university received nearly 1,000 requests to stay, many from international students, whose circumstances made them unable to leave campus.

“We’ve made exceptions for those with housing and financial precarity, as well as for international students who can’t return home because of global flight restrictions or other concerns,” Dolan wrote in a letter to faculty on Saturday.

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Dolan said that seniors conducting research on campus for their theses were initially told they could stay, but that the virus’ quick spread has made it so that those spots on campus must be prioritized for those who cannot leave.

Dining services will remain open to serve meals to students sticking around, though Princeton’s prestigious eating clubs will be closed, and students are required to “observe social distancing protocols,” which typically calls for six feet apart, according to the memo.

Princeton announced on March 11 that all classes for the spring semester would be held online, and that all undergraduates had to leave campus, which Dolan called a “vital gesture” for those unable to. The school has since arranged free buses to nearby airports to help ease the transition.

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“The more students who leave, the easier it will be to care for those who may become ill and to manage the eventual impact of this virus,” Dolan wrote.

She also advised faculty in departments in which seniors are doing thesis research to “release” seniors from certain expectations — which was similar to a request issued by Harvard University.

The university in Cambridge, Massachusetts gave students until 5 p.m. this past Sunday to move out. Harvard’s Dean of the Faculty of Medicine George Daley sent a letter to the research community saying that no one will be able to enter a lab or research core facility after 5 p.m. on Wednesday for the next six to eight weeks.

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Those doing research were asked to “pursue alternative scholarly activities in isolation,” with an exception granted to those working on research directly related to “immediate priorities of the COVID-19 [pandemic].”

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"We have Covid-19 and are in isolation so we do not spread it to anyone else," the actor wrote in his health update

“As a physician and steward for this community weighing the grim reports I’m reading from colleagues in Seattle and Italy, I believe the recommendation to shutter our labs is in our collective best interest,” Daley wrote. “Each one of the six high-level colleagues I have contacted in China has had their labs entirely mothballed for over two months. There are vanishingly few experiments that take precedence over life and death in our community.”

Universities were among the first to clear their spaces out; many states have since issued similar closings for things like movie theaters, bars and restaurants, while statewide school closures have been issue in states like Arizona, Vermont, South Carolina, Ohio and more.

As information about the coronavirus pandemic rapidly changes, PEOPLE is committed to providing the most recent data in our coverage. Some of the information in this story may have changed after publication. For the latest on COVID-19, readers are encouraged to use online resources from CDC, WHO, and local public health departments and visit our coronavirus hub.