Stanford halts return of freshmen, sophomore students to campus

Bay Area colleges continue to limit in-person instruction for the rest of academic year

Stanford University’s freshmen and sophomores will not be allowed on campus for the winter quarter, school officials announced a day after they said 43 students on campus had tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

In a message to the Stanford community, President Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Provost Persis Drell announced the changes for the quarter that runs today to March 19.

“We had hoped to be able to allow half of all undergraduates — that is, the frosh and sophomore classes — to be in person on campus for the winter quarter,” Stanford spokesman E. J. Miranda said Sunday in an email.

The campuswide communique sent Saturday attributed the change to the uptick in state and local virus cases and Santa Clara County’s extension of stay-at-home restrictions to help slow the recent surge of the coronavirus.

Stanford had announced last month it planned to have freshmen and sophomores attending in-person classes this quarter but that their arrival would be delayed until Jan. 21-24.

“COVID-19 cases in California have skyrocketed,” the Stanford leaders wrote. “We are now at the worst point of the pandemic so far.”

The Stanford letter cited health officials’ statements that before Thanksgiving, Santa Clara County had four or five daily coronavirus cases per 100,000 population.

“Recently, it has been approximately 50 cases per 100,000 population — a tenfold increase,” the letter said.

On Friday, Stanford announced on its COVID-19 dashboard that 43 graduate, professional or undergraduate students were in isolation after testing positive for the virus since Jan. 2. Updated information is expected to be released today.

Most of the cases are associated with students who recently arrived on campus or returned to Stanford, the website information said. Health officials have not identified a spread within the on- campus student community, the statement added. It also said the overall positivity rate in the student testing programs has remained low.

Miranda, the school spokesman, said that graduate students and undergraduate students with special circumstances have been returning to Stanford over the past week.

In the letter to the community, Stanford’s leaders said, “the worsening COVID-19 circumstances have now eroded our expectations about the experience we could deliver to undergraduates in the winter months.”

The spring quarter is scheduled to begin on March 29.