UAPB TO continue remote instruction through the end of the semester.

Dorms to be cleared by April

Remote instruction will continue until the end of the semester at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, the school announced Thursday.

The decision was made after the university had days earlier asked all its students in housing to leave the campus, said Tisha Arnold, a university spokeswoman.

Brandon Simons, a 19-yearold from Chicago, said students are being given short notice to return to campus and gather their belongings from the residence halls. The university had earlier said in-person classes were suspended through March.

“I believe they did the right thing to close for the semester,” Simons said. But he said he wished students had been told sooner what to expect.

“Some people don’t have ways to get back to Pine Bluff,” Simons said, adding that he believes he has until April 3 to grab his belongings from his old dorm room.

Arnold and others with UAPB did not respond to further questions about Thursday’s announcement.

The disruption to student housing occurred at UAPB shortly after the state’s first identified coronavirus case was announced March 11 as a patient receiving care in Pine Bluff. Last week, the university announced that 11 nursing students and two faculty members were believed to have had indirect contact with the patient.

Universities in the state, while reacting to the coronavirus, have not announced any cases involving students or workers.

Most of the largest public universities in the state — including Arkansas State University and the University of Central Arkansas — had kept open their residence halls as of Thursday, some with spring break scheduled for next week, after they have switched to remote instruction.

Several private institutions, however, have already moved to close their housing for the semester, and UA, the state’s largest university, on Wednesday announced that its housing

would close April 3. Some exemptions for students at the Fayetteville campus, including international students, will be granted.

Universities, however, must think about about whether they can continue to keep campus housing open, said University of Arkansas System President Donald Bobbitt.

He referred to guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC on Monday issued a recommendation that, for the next 15 days, when there is “minimal” spread of coronavirus in a community that in-person events with 10 or more people should be canceled.

“The direction we’re hearing from the government and from the Centers for Disease Control makes it difficult, when you have 100 people in the facility, to make sure that no more than 10 are together at any one time,” Bobbitt said, referring to students residences built to hold hundreds.

He said another consideration is whether there are enough staff members on hand to support the student population.

“If you keep a large number of students on campus, then you have to feed them, ensure their safety. You have to make sure you have the staffing to clean the common areas to prevent any illness, particularly this illness,” Bobbitt said.

Bobbitt said that for the UA System’s universities — there are six university campuses, including the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, a medical school — it’s up to the campus leadership to make the decision on housing.

“I think these are decisions best made at the local level,” Bobbitt said.

UAPB, with an enrollment of about 2,500 students, is a historically black university and among the smaller public universities in the state. Simons estimated that about 250 students lived in his dorm, Hunt Hall.