Harvard University officials said Monday that school will invite only 40 percent of undergraduates, including all first-year students, to campus for the fall semester …
Harvard University officials said Monday that school will invite only 40 percent of undergraduates, including all first-year students, to campus for the fall semester as the number of coronavirus cases continues to increase in most states.
In an email to students, university President Lawrence Bacow, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Claudine Gay, and Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana said officials recognize the “intrinsic incompatibility” between the in-person experience and the need to physically distance amid the pandemic.
“The recent upturn in COVID-19 cases in certain states illustrates the difficulty of making predictions, even well-informed ones, about the evolution of this virus. Given this uncertainty, we determined that our fall plan must enable us to bring back as many students as possible while providing sufficient margin to accommodate an escalation of the prevalence of COVID-19 in our area,” the email reads. “Without a vaccine or effective clinical treatments for the virus, we know that no choice that reopens the campus is without risk.
