Dartmouth College faculty members have urged the Hanover, New Hampshire-based university to change its fall plans by holding a fully-remote, non-residential fall term. The letter, signed by 150 members of Dartmouth’s faculty, likely comes in response to the recently announced sudden reversals at peer institutions including the University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, Columbia University, Stanford University, and Princeton University, to essentially close their campuses for the fall term.

Dartmouth Faculty Pen Letter Calling for Campus Closure

As Marco Allen reports for The Dartmouth in a piece entitled “Faculty members urge College to hold fully-remote fall,” “Experiences at peer institutions, the letter argues, have shown that just a ‘small amount of unsafe activity’ can lead to an outbreak. In response to the faculty letter, Student Assembly circulated a letter urging Hanlon and Helble to ‘consider every means necessary’ to allow students back on campus. The SA letter has garnered nearly 600 signatures from students and recent alumni as of Friday evening…The faculty letter, meanwhile, praises Dartmouth’s recent decision to delay the announcement of student arrival dates, stating that ‘evidence’ from other institutions and faculty experiences at Dartmouth have prompted them to believe that the College cannot maintain a ‘safe campus,’ even with Dartmouth’s ‘extensive’ plans. Although the letter says it aims to ‘not demonize college students in particular,’ it describes the idea that students can safely live in dorms as a ‘dangerous notion’ that ‘will undoubtedly work in opposition to our public health protocols.'”

Dartmouth’s Fall Plans Have Been Consistently Evolving

As our readers may remember, we previously wrote about how Dartmouth’s fall plans weren’t exactly going, well, according to plan — and this was before the faculty weighed in with their recent letter. While plans called for Dartmouth students to spend two of the four quarters on campus this coming year, reports indicate that only around 60% of Dartmouth undergraduates were offered the chance to be on campus for two terms. So now, in light of this faculty letter and all these reversals at peer institutions, the question remains: Will Dartmouth change its fall plans and offer only remote instruction? Stay tuned.