Editor’s Note: Jill Filipovic is a journalist based in New York and author of the book “The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness.” Follow her on Twitter. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely her own. View more opinion articles on CNN
For students at colleges and universities across the United States, coronavirus is bringing a new layer of uncertainty as classes are moved online and some students are being told to move out. Harvard University and Amherst College are among the latest institutions to ask their students to move out or not return after spring break.
It’s an understandable decision, given that schools with high numbers of students living in shared quarters on campus – attending group lectures and labs, and eating together in the dining halls – are perfect petri dishes for disease.
But many of these same schools have also been trying to recreate themselves as instruments for equality, expanding need-based financial aid and offering need-blind admissions so that anyone who qualifies, regardless of family wealth, can enjoy the huge step up that schools like Harvard confer.
But it’s these same students who may get caught in the coronavirus response crosshairs.
As it stands, many schools do not yet offer a clear public plan for how to handle students who can’t go home: those whose homes are in affected countries, those who are low-income and rely on financial aid for their housing, those whose homes don’t offer space conducive to learning (not every home in America, let alone the world, has the fast WiFi connection necessary for online classes), those who may not have a bed or place to stay in their childhood homes, and those who support themselves and don’t have homes to go back to.
Many low-income students rely on their schools for housing, food, and income – including work-study income (the only income many international students can legally make). A whole lot of first-generation college students are also supporting family members back home, paying bills, sending cash and otherwise sharing their resources with a network of people who all rely on each other. An unexpected change like this can have rippling consequences for a whole family.
The United States is a country where 40% of people say they could not afford an unexpected $400 expense.
Granted, struggling families are underrepresented in elite university populations, but there are still students who attend that come from families that struggle to get and keep them in college.
And this response to the coronavirus isn’t a directive to go home for a week; as of now, it’s indefinite. Harvard has said that students who need to stay on campus can do so but will need to attend classes online, but it’s not clear which students will fall into the “need to stay” category.
This strategy of figuring out the financials later is one more example of how many colleges and universities seem to assume a middle-class American model of family where parents support the child into adulthood; that just isn’t the case for a whole lot of people, including many students at these same institutions.
Elite schools have made a lot of important changes to welcome and accommodate students who have long been formally or informally excluded from their halls. And in moments of crisis, it is perhaps expecting too much to expect every single issue be ironed out.
To the credit of these institutions, they are working hard to make sure they accommodate students in need, keeping some dining halls open and directing students the relevant decision-maker. Staff have not cut and run; they are very clearly working tirelessly to make sure their students are safe, healthy and cared for – a complicated and intensive process, particularly in a hectic time. We are all flying pretty blind here, and Harvard is clearly putting in a lot of effort to make this huge disruption as painless as possible.
But there is also a level of opaqueness here that is concerning. My inquiry to Harvard was met with a link to this FAQ page, which suggests students with move-out and financial concerns talk to their resident deans and the financial aid office. A communications official at Amherst noted that she was completely under water and pointed to their FAQ page and the statement from their president, which offer less information than Harvard’s.
But will students get a refund for their room and board at colleges and universities that are evacuating? On Harvard’s FAQ page it says that the school “is still working on the details for what will happen with student charges. Please be patient as this will take some time and the priority is getting students home safely.”
For students whose room and board are paid for because of financial need, there is no indication that they will receive the immediate cash infusion they will need to afford to live and eat elsewhere. In response to the question of work-study – “What happens if I cannot work to pay my term and summer time contributions?”– the school asks students to “be patient” and says that “it may take some time before financial issues are settled.”
And Harvard and Amherst, institutions with tremendous resources, are almost surely doing this significantly better and with more thought and support than just about any other schools in the country; students will get more generous and timely support than students at just about any other school.
I’m focusing on them not because they’re responding poorly, but because this is probably the best response we’re going to see, which should raise serious concerns about how less-resourced and less-prominent schools are doing, and how the most vulnerable students at those schools are going to fare.
At the heart, this isn’t a Harvard problem or an Amherst College problem or a school problem generally. It’s a spectacular national failure of the Trump administration to be transparent about the risks of coronavirus, to adequately test and diagnose the populace, to even compile accurate numbers of infections. That leaves institutions like universities out on their own, making decisions based on limited information – which in turn leaves poor students worse off than wealthier ones, students at elite schools better off than students at less-elite ones, and everyone struggling to figure out what the heck is going on here and how to stay safe and healthy.
That’s not a problem colleges alone can solve. That’s a problem for the President. And this weekend he went golfing.