COVID-19 Important Community Update
March 13, 2020
Dear Brandeis Community,
Since yesterday we have learned that some students, faculty, and staff have had potential contacts off campus with individuals who later were identified as potential close contacts or tested positive for coronavirus. To our knowledge, none of our community members have currently tested positive or shown any symptoms of the virus, and all who had such contact are self-quarantining as a precaution. This does highlight the need to do all the things we are doing as a community — practicing good hygiene, engaging in social distancing, and moving classes online, and preparing to work remotely.
Some important information to know:
- Many classes are already moving online, all classes with more than 100 students will be online as of Monday, March 16, and all classes will be online by March 26, if not sooner. There are no classes between March 23 and March 25.
- Students are encouraged to move out of campus housing as soon as practical. Students will not be penalized either in their grades or credits if they are not able to take an exam in person or participate in person in class.
- All students must move out of residence halls by March 25, other than those granted exceptions from the Department of Community Living.
- Students who are in need of financial assistance to move off campus should immediately contact emergencyfunds@brandeis.edu
- Students who qualify will then be able to use the university’s online travel agent to book travel that will be subsidized by the university.
- If you are a current customer of Storage Squad, you may pick up packing materials in the DCL Main Office in Usdan from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.
- If you are not a current customer of Storage Squad but are interested in storing your items with them, please visit the Storage Squad website. Please note that the Storage Squad is the only approved storage company. No other storage companies are permitted inside the residence halls.
- For students who do not plan to be Storage Squad customers, packing materials are available in Gosman.
- For staff and faculty, we encourage you to discuss now with your managers, department chairs, or program heads how to be prepared to work remotely. As you know this is a fast-moving issue and there will likely be more changes to how we work announced soon.
We realize there remain many logistical, financial, and other issues related to moving and to our transition to online learning; we will have additional updates on several of those later today and will continue to provide updates.
In addition, we are aware that students are organizing themselves to help with aspects of the move-out process. We would like to thank them for this and we would like to connect their work with institutional efforts. For any students organizing these efforts, please contact Mark Brimhall-Vargus (mbv@brandeis.edu), Raymond Ou (rou@brandeis.edu) and Jamele Adams (deanadams@brandeis.edu) to share information.
We can also report that our athletic conference has canceled all regular season and championship competition for the 2020 spring season. This was approved by the UAA Presidents Council.
We realize information is coming quickly and it is difficult to keep up and sort through everything. Please know that Brandeis is doing everything possible to share accurate information as quickly as we can, and we are all striving to be as supportive as possible to our entire community at this challenging time.
Sincerely,
Ron Liebowitz, President
Lisa M. Lynch, Provost
Stew Uretsky, Executive Vice President, for Finance and Administration