NEW BRITAIN, Conn. (AP) – The leaders of Connecticut public and private universities declared their schools ready to reopen Wednesday after months of preparations to make them as safe as possible during the coronavirus pandemic.
Officials from the University of Connecticut, the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system and the Connecticut Conference of Independent Colleges appeared with Gov. Ned Lamont at Central Connecticut State University to tout their plans for in-person, remote, and hybrid learning this fall.
The news conference came on the first day of in-person classes for three of the four schools in the state university system.
Western Connecticut State University has moved all its classes online and suspended moving students back onto campus for at least two weeks because of a recent COVID-19 outbreak in Danbury, which has seen more than 200 cases in the past two weeks and where the school is located.
UConn, which has had students back on campus for a couple of weeks, starts classes on Monday.
“We are ready to serve all our students,” said Mark Ojakian, the president of the Connecticut State Colleges Universities system.
All Connecticut colleges have adopted strict guidelines for allowing students back on campus. Those include requiring students coming from states with high infection rates to have a negative test result before being allowed on campus. They must get another test when they arrive and quarantine for two weeks on campus before getting a third test.
Ojakian says he’s confident that students can and will follow social distancing guidelines and the requirement to wear masks. He pointed to UConn’s decision to evict a dozen students from campus housing after a party in a dorm room as an example of how serious the schools are taking those rules.
UConn President Thomas Katsouleas said officials haven’t seen any gatherings larger than six people since that incident.
Lamont said the state will be monitoring the reopenings closely and is prepared to shut schools down again, should the infection rates begin to spike.
“Look, I don’t want to be ‘Governor Killjoy’ and that was not my nickname when I was in college,” Lamont said. “But I also know that we’re going to have to work hard to keep our colleges open safely.”
