Despite COVID-19 Risks, Liberal Arts Colleges Welcome Students Back To Campus

This story is part two in our higher ed series The Spring Semester Divide. You can read and listen to part one here.

As he was preparing to hit send on a carefully-crafted email in October inviting all students back to campus for the spring semester, the president of Holy Cross College in Worcester said he prayed — a lot.

“Before, during, after, every day, every midday,” the Rev. Philip Boroughs said, laughing. “There's so many unpredictables in this pandemic, and you want something definitive, but you live in a world of uncertainty.”

On a recent snowy afternoon, the Jesuit priest, wearing a white collar and a black mask, stood inside the empty campus center overlooking downtown Worcester — a COVID-19 hot spot. Boroughs said he decided to take the risk of re-opening, in part, because traditionally 90% of the Catholic college’s students live on the hilltop campus and for most of 2020 missed being a community.

“Interacting together,” he said. “The friendships that are formed that last a lifetime. These are so characteristic of who we are and the level and quality of our education, which is small classes. That sense of being a community, that's critical to what we do.”

In shifting from online to in-person learning, Holy Cross is in the minority but far from alone in Massachusetts. At least eight colleges, including Smith and Berklee, that were online in the fall are going in-person or hybrid in the spring. Across the country, nearly 200 colleges are making the switch, Oberlin in Ohio and Valencia in Florida among them. Another 200 are delaying in-person starts but intend to transition to in-person later in the semester.

Higher education researchers say they are deeply skeptical.

“We have as many deaths as there were in World War II, and yet institutions are still planning on re-opening,” said Chris Marsicano, who directs the College Crisis Initiative at Davidson College in North Carolina. Since March, the center has been tracking colleges' COVID-19 plans.

“It is miraculous to me that institutions that were so concerned with the number of cases and hospitalizations and deaths in August seem less concerned now,” he said.

Marsicano said colleges changing course this semester fall into two categories. The first includes Holy Cross, which in January received a $23.5 million gift from Agnes Williams, the late widow of Edward Bennett Williams, the former owner of the Washington Redskins and Baltimore Orioles.

“The sort of Ivy-plus institutions of the world that have large endowments per student and have the ability to test every student [for COVID-19] at least once or twice a week,” Marsicano explained.

The other group depends on dorm and meal charges just to keep their doors open and their lights on.

“Losing that room and board revenue for one semester is painful,” Marsicano said. “Losing that revenue for two semesters or three semesters is an existential problem for many of these institutions.”

That’s why, Marsicano suspects, less selective schools like Becker College also in Worcester, Dean College in Franklin and Regis College in Weston are moving to in-person classes.

But college leaders dismiss that notion, arguing little transmission of the coronavirus from students to professors or students to students has occurred. While researchers say some campuses were superspreaders in their home counties, they disagree about the level of risk.

“Fall semester went quite well,” said Rich Doherty, president of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Massachusetts.

Doherty insisted reopening is not about revenue and, since March, colleges have shared best practices about testing and limiting the number of students in dorms and dining halls. He said those schools bringing students back this semester have done careful, thoughtful preparation.

At Holy Cross, that means testing students, faculty and staff twice a week and allowing professors to decide whether they want to teach in-person or online.

Ed O’Donnell, chair of the school's history department, said he’s the only instructor who has opted in so far.

“We all prize the in-person experience,” said O’Donnell, who has experience teaching online and for mass audiences like One Day University. “But I've just felt the college has taken enough steps to make things safe.”

Holy Cross is also spreading students out in dorms and dining halls and requiring everyone to wear a mask. On the day GBH News visited campus, all students appeared to be complying as they were trickling back to campus and moving.

“There's definitely going to be people who aren't going to be the safest. That's just the reality of the fact,” said senior Emma Flanagan, 21, from Braintree, who, like many undergrads, is excited to be back on the hill.

Last semester, she rented an apartment downtown, took her classes online and came to campus once a week to use the library and see friends.

Flanagan said it's “embarrassing to say that your library is your social time, but you’d see one random person that you hadn’t seen in a while and end up talking to them for thirty minutes."

Boroughs acknowledged the reopened campus won't be risk-free.

“I really think everyone wants to be back in the face-to-face environment,” he said, overlooking wary faculty members. “Now we have these new strains that are very difficult, so we’re not going to have a semester without cases."

The college has leased hotel rooms downtown and created isolation and quarantine spaces on campus.

GBH’s Diane Adame contributed to this report.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said Amherst College was online last semester. The college offered in-person classes in the fall.