Students will not be returning to the Gettysburg College Campus this school year, although their education will continue with online learning.
The decision was posted on the College website in the form of a letter from College President Bob Iuliano.
Parts of that letter are reproduced here:
After careful reflection, and based on our informed assessment of the situation involving COVID-19, the College has decided that the health and safety of our community requires that we suspend our residential program and resume classes on an exclusively remote basis as of March 23 (the end of our students’ extended spring break).
Following a conversation with the Board of Trustees, the College has determined that the only responsible step for our students and the entire community is to move to a remote learning environment for the remainder of the semester. We will continue to monitor the situation carefully and, in the unlikely event that circumstances change such that we are able responsibly to resume normal operations before the semester ends, we will, of course, be prepared to change course.
In suspending our residential program, we do so reluctantly and with awareness of the implications for our students in particular. But this is a situation where the very strength of our College—the intimacy of our community—works against us. At a time when public health officials are urging that individuals engage in social distancing, we have students living in close proximity to one another, eating in common spaces, and learning together in shared classrooms. Should a case of COVID-19 arise on our campus, our structure could well facilitate the transmission of the virus throughout our community—and, perhaps, into the Borough of Gettysburg.
It is not clear that we could properly respond to an outbreak. Public health officials recommend the isolation of people who are symptomatic and the quarantine of those with whom the person has come into close contact. In a residential environment such as ours, where each of us interacts with hundreds of people daily, we could not be confident in our ability to identify those with whom an infected person has come into close contact and, even if we could, we would not likely have the physical space to quarantine them. We cannot expect to rely on local health facilities to respond, which would likely be handling a spike in demand from the surrounding communities. As a responsible partner to our local and regional neighbors, we must be cognizant about the burdens we impose on their health and safety infrastructures.
I am confident that, working together in the ways that our community does, our students will continue to receive the high-quality education for which the College is so widely known and respected.
These are truly extraordinary times, but this is also a truly extraordinary community, defined and strengthened by our unique history. I cannot imagine wanting to be anywhere else, or with any other group of people, as we navigate these uncharted waters with the optimism, determination, and forward-focus that is the hallmark of this campus.