OSHKOSH, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – UW-Oshkosh students won’t return to campus this semester.
Online classes will continue through June 5.
The university is also taking other steps to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
The coronavirus is here now, and several universities across the state have been trying to prevent the spread of it.
Banners once hanging at UWO, taken down. Students, gone.
“At first, I don’t know, I thought everything was blown out of proportion,” said UWO student Abi Borchaerding.
Normally bustling walkways, now deserted.
“I’m used to seeing hundreds of people on campus every day, and seeing nobody is just weird,” said Borchaerding.
UWO chancellor Andrew Leavitt tells FOX 11 starting March 23, only employees who absolutely have to be there will be reporting to campus.
“Those clearly would include residence hall staff, they would include food service, they would include public safety, facilities people of that nature.”
That was one of the decisions UWO made to contain the virus.
But for some students, like Borchaerding, it wasn’t the biggest.
“I’m just moving my stuff out of my room, and I’m going back home.”
Borchaerding lives in a UWO residence hall. Soon enough, she won’t.
“They started closing everything down, so I started taking things more seriously.”
Unless students have a valid reason to stay, like international students, they have to move home.
Leavitt says they’res still figuring out how moving day will look.
“We don’t want to have, you know, an entire residence hall show up on the same day to move out, so my guess is it will be more of a room-by-room or floor-by-floor, but I’m going to leave it to the experts to announce the details of that.”
He says the university also pulled the plug on spring graduation.
“This is very difficult. Students that worked for four, hard long years to earn a college degree, and we understand the impact this has on them and their families.”
Borchaerding says she’s heard and seen a lot of people very sad about the news.
“They’ve worked really hard to get their degree, so they want to be able to walk across the stage too.”
UWO says it hopes a postponed graduation ceremony can still happen.
But, students should also prepare for something completely different, or even the worst-case scenario.
“It could be something that is online, or quite simply it just simply may not happen this year,” Leavitt said.
UWO announced it will pay students back for the days of housing and dining that were disrupted by COVID-19.
