St. John’s University announces plan for students to return to campus

St. John's basketball (Photo by Steven Ryan/Getty Images)
St. John's basketball (Photo by Steven Ryan/Getty Images) /
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St. John’s University has announced its plans for students to return to campus but athletic events are still a major question mark in New York.

As schools formulate plans to have students return to the classroom for the 2020-21 academic year, many obstacles and complications are thrown into the mix because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Once a major hotspot for the virus, St. John’s University has announced its plans to bring students back on campus in the late summer for the fall semester.

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Like all schools around the country, St. John’s closed in mid-March and have yet to open, conducting all its summer courses via online instruction.

President Conrado “Bobby” Gempesaw announced that the fall semester will begin on August 24 instead of September 2 and run through the Thanksgiving break, which begins around November 20.

Students will then complete their final exams and projects online starting on November 30 and ending December 8.

The university will also conduct classes on Labor Day, Veteran’s Day and the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, typically days the university would be closed in order to get the semester over as quickly as possible.

However, the school will be closed on Election Day (November 3).

All people on campus will have to abide by social distancing guidelines and wear a face covering as large gatherings are expected to be limited, but no official statement was made on if this guideline includes sporting events, but that seems very likely.

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The school also made significant changes to on-campus housing, eliminating all bedrooms that would include three students and making all bedrooms only accessible to one or two persons.

St. John’s has also assigned one on-campus housing building as a quarantine and isolation facility in which no other students will be permitted inside that building.

The name of the building that was designated for this has not been released to the public.

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There was also no timeline or start date on when the second semester could begin and if that would be in-person classes, online instruction, or a combination of both.