SMITHFIELD – Bryant University intends to have campus life return for the 2020 fall semester, the school announced Thursday.
Bryant’s studies are currently being conducted remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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University President Ronald K. Machtley and incoming President Ross Gittell said jointly Thursday that the school affirmed its intent to deliver the 2020 fall term on campus after an “extensive review” with school leadership and considering plans announced this week by government and health officials.
Bryant began its transition from on-campus life to remote learning on March 10 and had canceled all on-campus events due to the virus.
Bryant is the first Rhode Island-based college to announce such plans. Norton-based Wheaton College announced Tuesday it also intends to have campus life return in the fall.
Machtley and Gittell said Bryant will allow students to return to campus for residential life when the school feels confident that the campus is “is safe for them and for all members” of the school community. Bryant said it is developing policies and procedures that must be in place before reopening and the school will announce further details on its plans in the “weeks and months ahead.”
“Our expectation is that we will all be facing a ‘new normal’ and that special accommodations will be needed in our near-term future,” Machtley and Gittell said. “[B]ut we will handle it with … a meticulous attention to health and safety.”
Brown University President Christina H. Paxson recently wrote an op-ed in The New York Times that colleges reopening for the fall semester should be a “national priority for the well-being of the economy for a nation to recover from coronavirus. However, Brown has yet to formally announce its own plans on how it will conduct the fall semester.
Brown said earlier this month that it sustained a $20 million loss from the pandemic thus far, with Paxson and other administrators taking salary reductions and the school instituting a hiring freeze for the next fiscal year. Those losses could be as high as $50 million or worse over the next several months, the school also said.
James Bessette is the PBN special projects editor, and also covers the nonprofit and education sectors. You may reach him at Bessette@PBN.com. You may also follow him on Twitter at @James_Bessette.
