CORVALLIS, Ore. — In a couple of months, college students may be heading back to campus, but just what will it look like for students? Several state universities in Oregon are all making changes to make sure students and staff are safe.
Steve Clark is the Vice President of Student Affairs at OSU, he says they’re getting plans in place as if they’re going to have students on campus.
Clark says they’re looking at different approaches to keep both students and staff safe. He said he’s preparing to do business differently going into the future. One of the approaches the university is looking into includes splitting up historically large classes, where there could be more than a hundred students in an auditorium or lecture hall.
“A large lecture hall might be divided into two or three different sessions where they are broken down from 100 students to 25 to 30 and held in three different locations over three different periods,” said Clark.
Another framework the school is looking into is dorm life. In Corvallis, there are about five thousand students who live on campus. Clark says the university won’t be allowing three students in a single dorm room anymore.
The state’s seven public universities have agreed to follow similar guidelines. University of Oregon, University of Portland and George Fox are all planning on having students back on campus in the fall. All universities are going to be paying attention to what Governor Brown and the Oregon Health Authority say about how to manage large crowds of people, especially on a college campus.
Many colleges across the country are already making decisions that they are going to go ahead and have students back on campus.