Stanford first-year, sophomores and transfer students no longer allowed in campus dorms, President says

STANFORD — The university has scrapped plans to bring first-year, sophomore and new transfer undergraduate students to live on campus this fall, President Marc Tessier-Lavigne announced Thursday.

In a message to the Stanford community Tessier-Lavigne said that the university has also made the decision to deliver “almost all” undergraduate instruction remotely during the autumn quarter, “with very limited in-person offerings,” due to the continuing spread of the coronavirus. Students who have been approved to be in residence due to a special circumstance will still be housed, the president also said.

The announcement comes just two days after the university announced it would postpone fall sports competitions in the Pac-12, a move that is set to throw travel and college plans for hundreds of families across the country and California into disarray.

Stanford had initially intended to begin the fall quarter one week early and as some undergraduates to cycle through the university residence halls as cohorts throughout the school year. The university also expected to have half of its undergraduates — or the equivalent of two class years — back on campus for the fall quarter and each subsequent quarter.

Though the university said in June that plans may cohorts of students may change to a smaller number in a given quarter if “health conditions require it,” Tessier-Lavigne announced Thursday the coronavirus situation has made it “simply not feasible” to have any students but the bare minimum on campus.

“As we all have seen, there has been a dramatic reversal in California’s reopening due to the increased spread of COVID-19,” Tessier-Lavigne said. “There have now been nearly 600,000 COVID-19 cases and more than 10,000 deaths in California, and much of the state, including all of the Bay Area, has been placed on a “watch list” due to worsening trends in public health indicators.”

Tessier-Lavigne said that the university intends to invite first-year, sophomores and new transfer students to be in residence on campus for the winter quarter, “if public health conditions allow,” and juniors and seniors for the spring quarter.

Aside from who gets to be on campus, Tessier-Lavigne added that the start of the autumn quarter will remain the same as previously announced.

In an email to “faculty colleagues” that was leaked just before noon Thursday, Provost Persis Drell said recent state guidance “prohibits most indoor classes while our county is still on the ‘watch list” as well as on activities that “would make for a very limiting on-campus undergraduate experience this fall.”

Graduate students and professional school students will still be welcomed on campus, as will the about 800 undergraduates from all classes with special circumstances who have petitioned the school to have access to campus facilities, Drell said.

Drell also added in the email that further communications around planning for the year to come will follow over the next days.

“We will continue to plan for reigning undergraduate back in winder, spring and summer quarters, assuming public health conditions allow,” she said, adding the university must do so “in a manner that supports our community’s safety and a robust undergraduate experience.”

Tessier-Lavigne said the plan reversal is a “disappointing turn of events.”

“All of us miss the unique, vibrant, palpable spirit of Stanford that is created when we are here together, living and learning in community,” Tessier-Lavigne said. “Each of us embodies this Stanford spirit, and I am confident that we can sustain the collective energy of our extraordinary community throughout this crisis, until we can be present together once again on the Farm.”