(This story was recently published by the Portland Press Herald. Photo by Brianna Soukup of the Portland Press Herald.)
Colleges around Maine will send students home to finish the semester remotely after Thanksgiving, but only after testing to prevent the spread of COVID-19 during travel.
Students will study remotely through finals in mid-December, with plans to come back a week later than originally planned. Their spring break also is canceled. “As of the moment, we expect our students to come back in the second half of January, and we’ll use the same protocols we used in the fall,” Dlugos said. That means all students will have to produce a negative test in order to return to campus and physical distancing, masking and sanitizing will continue.
Adam Martin, a sophomore from St. Albans, Vermont, is going home for Thanksgiving but is among a small number of students who will return to finish the semester due to his job in campus security. “I know there’s a lot of split on campus,” said Martin, 20. “A lot of people are dreading going home, but a lot of people are uncertain and are like, ‘Maybe home is the best place for me right now.'”
