Brown Announces Plans For Students' Return To Campus In Fall

Brown University will move to a three-term model for the next academic year, students will live alone in dorm rooms, and classes with more than 20 students will be taught remotely to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, the Ivy League university announced Tuesday.

Undergraduates will be required to be on campus for two of the three terms - fall, spring and summer - but no first-year students will attend the fall term, President Christina Paxson said in a letter to students and made public by the school.

Giving students who live on campus a single room, and limiting in-person class sizes to 20 students will enable safe distancing of students and instructors in classrooms, the school said.

"Although I am deeply disappointed that we can't welcome our first-year students to campus in the fall, we simply don't think that it is safe to have all undergraduates on campus simultaneously," Paxson said. "We hope that by the time the spring term begins, the public health situation will have improved enough that we no longer need a de-densified campus."

All graduate students will have the option to study in person or remotely.

All students will be tested for COVID-19 when they return to Brown, and students will be required to participate in random testing to monitor for community spread of the coronavirus, the school announced.