When Coronavirus Closes Colleges, Some Students Lose Hot Meals, Health Care, and a Place to Sleep

[Demovictory9]

When Berea College sent out a campuswide email at midday on Tuesday, announcing that it would cancel classes and send students home for the rest of the semester because of concerns about the coronavirus, the dining hall erupted in cheers.

But quickly the students turned solemn, worried, even a little panicky, said Brady Willis, a sophomore from Northern California. Willis’s roommate tried to figure out if he had enough gas money to drive from the Kentucky college back home to Georgia. A group of students began to pool money to rent a storage locker, $20 here, $25 there. Another wondered where he’d find a job to help his family pay for the extra two months of groceries they’d have to buy when he returned home.

“It’s been a roller coaster of emotions,” said Willis, the student-body vice president, late Tuesday night.

Berea, nestled in the rolling Appalachian Mountains, has a unique mission: to serve economically disadvantaged students. Nearly all of its 1,600 students receive Pell Grants; the average family income is less than $30,000 a year.


Nearly all of Berea College’s 1,600 students receive Pell Grants, and their average family income is less than $30,000 a year.
But as colleges across the country cancel in-person classes and tell students to leave campus, the challenges facing Willis and his classmates are not unusual. For many low-income and first-generation students, college is not just an educational institution but their primary source of security, a provider of hot meals and health care and a place to sleep.

The abrupt college closures — many institutions have told undergraduates to leave by the end of this week — have been jarring for all students, but they can be particularly distressing for the most disadvantaged. Those students may lack the funds to get home, or not have a home to go to. They may not have reliable internet connections with which to continue classes online. Their work-study job pays all the bills.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/When-Coronavirus-Closes/248228?cid=wcontentgrid_hp_1b

[pat_k]

1. Keep smaller operation going to continue meals, housing, for those who need.

In Austria, as schools close, they are revamping things to create centers within the schools for supervising kids who would otherwise have no supervision because their parents are unable to stay home with them.

Why not do something similar at all levels?

"Shut down" should never mean "turn people out into an even more risky situation."

Sure, close schools. No more classes, so there are a lot fewer opportunities for "community transfer." But continue the vital school-based services for those who need them. With massive scale-down of the number of people involved, I would think the services could be delivered with appropriate monitoring, precautions, and testing, to protect all involved.

[jimfields33]

2. These colleges have fat endowments

They need to step up.