Newsbrief: Liberty University returns to school
by Jonathan Grenier
(Photo: New York Times)
The president of Liberty University refused to send students home after spring break, leading to an outbreak of COVID-19 on campus, according to the New York Times.
Liberty University is an evangelical college in Lynchburg, Virginia. The school has over 45,000 undergraduates and around 100,000 students in total including graduate and online students.
After their spring break during the week of March 14th through March 21st, Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr., made the decision to reopen the school for students. By the following Friday, March 27, eleven students were reported to be sick with symptoms of the coronavirus.
Three students were sent to the hospital for testing and the other eight were urged to self isolate. On March 29, two of the three tests came back. One student tested positive, one tested negative. The third student has not received his test results back.
Four other students who returned to campus from New York, and two of their roommates, were told to self-isolate but were not told to get tested due to lack of symptoms.
Falwell’s choice to reopen the school was based on his belief that the pandemic was not as big of an issue as portrayed by the news. “Mr. Falwell derided it [the pandemic] as an “overreaction” driven by liberal desires to damage Mr. Trump,” According to the New York Times.
But politics was not the only reasoning behind Falwell’s decision to bring back students. Falwell said, “We think it’s irresponsible for so many universities to just say ‘closed, you can’t come back,’ push the problem off on other communities and sit there in their ivory towers.”
Of their 45,000 undergraduate students, only 1,900 on-campus students returned after spring break. After the outbreak of 11 students on campus with symptoms, around 800 students left to return home.
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Jonathan Grenier is writing from home for the exchange. Although procrastination is tough, work is being done.
