Most students will spend two of the next four terms on campus, Dartmouth announced in a campus-wide email today. The Class of 2024 will receive priority for on-campus enrollment for the fall and spring terms, and the Class of 2021 will receive priority for the spring. The Class of 2022 will receive priority for the fall, and members of the Class of 2023, as well as students in the Class of 2022 who deferred their sophomore summer, will have priority for the summer of 2021.
Sophomores, juniors and seniors will be asked to confirm whether they would like to be on campus during their priority term or terms and to rank the other terms based on their preferences for enrollment. The form for doing so will be sent to students via email on June 30 and will remain open until July 20. Incoming members of the Class of 2024 will only be asked to confirm their enrollment for fall and spring. Students will be able to elect to spend as many as all four terms enrolled remotely.
The list of students on-campus in the fall will be confirmed by mid to late July. Financial aid packages will be available in early August, and classes will start on Sept. 14.
Classes will remain largely, though not entirely, online this fall, as will meetings with deans and other College staff, health service appointments and faculty office hours.
All instruction will be graded with normal letter grades, including the non-recording option, and tuition will remain the same regardless of whether a student is on or off campus.
Arrivals back on campus in the fall will be staggered over a six-day period, and all students will be tested for COVID-19 and required to quarantine for 14 days upon return to campus.
Students housed in normal residence halls will all live in singles or two-room doubles. Members of the Class of 2022 will likely “be able to live in Greek facilities, subject to reduced occupancy levels.” Graduate student housing — which already offers single-occupancy bedrooms — will remain largely the same.
The College will announce more information related to housing and arrival for the fall term in the week of Aug. 16, after the list of students on campus for that term is confirmed.
International students in the Class of 2024 will be able to enroll online if they are unable to secure a visa in time for the fall.
Once on campus, students, faculty and staff will be subject to a number of public health restrictions. Contact tracing, “enhanced cleaning procedures,” staggered scheduling and limited building access will be in place. Travel away from campus will not be permitted for the entire term, the announcement said, and visitors to campus will not be allowed. Students will also be required to wear masks at all times except in private spaces. The College has asked that gatherings be limited to groups under ten people.
Students will be required to sign a “statement of community principles” committing them to following public health regulations. The announcement states that students will “lose the privilege of on-campus enrollment” if they do not follow the College’s COVID-19 behavioral requirements. They may also be subject to disciplinary action following “normal standards and processes.”
Additionally, the College advised students to bring “no more than they can take with them on short notice” in case the campus is forced to shut down again due to another outbreak. Campus will close again, the announcement indicated, if the infection rate exceeds a certain level.
The announcement also stressed that these plans may change “based on emerging data, ongoing modeling of disease progression and regional, national and global events.” The successful development of a vaccine could “shift the landscape,” it added.
Dartmouth libraries will be open only to students, faculty and staff, the College said, but it remains unclear whether students living in off-campus residences in the Hanover area will be able to use Dartmouth facilities.
An announcement from the Ivy League regarding athletics is expected in July, the email said.
The timetable for fall classes will be posted July 18.
Another article with more information will be published in the future.
