Princeton Won’t Force All Students to Vacate, Officials Say

Princeton University officials confirmed Wednesday morning that the school is not planning to close campus nor to force all students to vacate. This announcement comes after a Change.org petition calling for the University to provide students the option to stay on campus garnered over 3,000 signatures overnight. “The University is not planning to force all students to vacate, nor to close campus,” Associate Dean of the College Khristina Gonzalez wrote in an email, sent in the morning of Mar. 11, to students in the Scholars Institute Fellows Program (SIFP). “I want to reassure you that regardless of how the University needs to proceed to promote community health in light of COVID-19, we will support all students, including those with financial precarity and those who need to remain on campus and cannot travel.”Nonetheless, the University strongly encourages students who are able to return home for Spring Break to do so and remain at home.“The best actions students can take now to help protect this community are to finish midterms, go home and stay there,” wrote University spokesman Mike Hotchkiss in an email correspondence with the University Press Club. “This is squarely in line with public health best practice to decrease the density of students on campus.”The University is expected to issue more specific guidance later today on a range of issues impacting students—including “which students should and should not stay on campus.”Gonzalez added in her email to SIFP students, “I know that this situation is incredibly stressful for you all—as it is for our whole community. But please rest assured that your concerns have been heard, and that I have seen the University working hard to ensure that they are addressed." Correction: A previous version of the story mistakenly attributed the last quote in the story to University spokesman Mike Hotchkiss. The quote is from an email from Associate Dean of the College Khristina Gonzalez to SIFP students.