Penn tells students who live OFF-CAMPUS to return to parents' homes
The University of Pennsylvania has now contacted parents to let them know that even students in third party apartments have been asked to go home.
Coronavirus concerns have caused many campuses to send students home from dorm rooms.
As college campuses across the country have asked students to leave their on-campus housing, the University of Pennsylvania has taken it what some are calling a step too far, by telling its students who don’t even live on campus that they have to return home to mom and dad.
According to a report from student paper The Daily Pennsylvanian, Provost Wendell Pritchett sent an email to parents of students living in off-campus housing, explaining that all students, even those not on campus, were expected to return to their parents’ homes due to coronavirus fears.
Students and parents were reassured that the university had taken it upon itself to let landlords know that students were being told to leave, and “asked them to work with their tenants to support this public health necessity.”
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Multiple third party student housing complexes pushed back, telling their tenants that they did not have to leave, and even insisting that the complexes had received no such warning from the university.
”We were as surprised as you may have been this evening to learn that the University has now also suggested it is instructing students living off-campus to ‘leave’ their private residences by March 17,” General Manager of The Radian apartment building Kayla Hoffman reportedly wrote in an email to residents, according to the Daily Pennsylvanian.
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”There was no direct communication from Penn informing us about moving off-campus tenants away from their residences by Tuesday. That is why we were surprised.” Radian sales and customer experience manager Hyniff Heyward told The Daily Pennsylvanian.
“I understand they have to kick people off of their actual campus because that’s a liability on their end, and they’d have to supervise those students,” Penn senior Naeche Vincent said. “However, if I live off-campus and I’ve paid rent for the entire semester, Penn trying to intervene and tell people to go home — unless they’re going to pay for my rent for the entire semester — is not fair.”
”To assume that everyone has a structured place to just return to is completely false,” Vincent added. “A lot of people do not have the same definition of home, and some students are homeless as well.”
Campus Reform reached out to the university for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.
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