As the Coronavirus Hit, Most Colleges Sent People Home. Liberty University Is Welcoming Them Back.

As colleges nationwide have urged students and faculty members to stay home after spring break, Liberty University, in Virginia, is welcoming thousands of students to return to their residence halls and to meet face to face with faculty members.

In an interview on Tuesday, the university’s president, Jerry L. Falwell Jr., defended the decision to allow anyone who wants to return to campus to do so, despite a statewide order issued on Monday by Virginia’s Democratic governor, Ralph S. Northam. That order, prompted by a growing number of Covid-19 cases across the state, bans gatherings of more than 10 people and directs all nonessential businesses to close by Wednesday morning.

Coronavirus Hits Campus

As colleges and universities have struggled to devise policies to respond to the quickly evolving situation, here are links to The Chronicle’s key coverage of how this worldwide health crisis is affecting campuses.

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On Tuesday the governor’s press secretary, Alena Yarmosky, told The Chronicle that Northam was concerned by reports that Liberty was welcoming students back and urging faculty members to keep on-campus office hours. She said, in an email, that members of Northam’s administration had spoken directly with Falwell about those concerns. “All Virginia colleges and universities have a responsibility to comply with public-health directions and protect the safety of their students, faculty, and larger communities,” Yarmosky wrote. “Liberty University is no exception.”

As of Tuesday afternoon, the Virginia Department of Health was reporting that 290 people statewide had tested positive for Covid-19 and seven had died.

Falwell, who heads the private evangelical university in Lynchburg that was founded by his father, the late Rev. Jerry L. Falwell Sr., said complaints that his decision could endanger the lives of students or local residents were “politically driven” and “based on ignorance.”

On Tuesday, Mayor Treney Tweedy of Lynchburg called on Falwell to close the campus, calling the decision to call students back “reckless.”

“We are in the midst of a public-health crisis,” Tweedy said in a written statement. “I am concerned for the students, faculty, and employees at Liberty University, and I am also very concerned for the residents of the Lynchburg community … It is unfortunate that President Falwell chose to not keep his word to us and to this community.”

The decision to welcome students back to campus while most classes are taught online prompted an angry response from a professor of English at Liberty, Marybeth Davis Baggett. In an op-ed carried by the Religion News Service, she called on Liberty’s board to override Falwell’s decision.

She said she and her colleagues had been told they must conduct classes from their offices, even though the students will view the instruction online. They’re also expected to hold office hours and welcome students face to face, she wrote in the op-ed, which was picked up by The Washington Post and widely circulated.

“The leadership’s willingness to enable Falwell’s self-professed politically motivated decision bespeaks a spirit of fear, or worse, that shames the mission they ostensibly pursue,” Baggett wrote.

“I beg the deans, senior leadership, and board members to think more long-term,” she continued. “They are compelled by what is genuinely best for the university to act, to say nothing of their altruistic obligations as Christians. These leaders may think they are helping the institution, but in fact, they are sowing the seeds for its devastation.”

Apparently responding to the outrage from some faculty members, Falwell said on Tuesday that professors would be permitted to record their classes from home and that “any faculty member who believes he or she is at risk may request a waiver and it will be granted.”

In a statement on Monday, the university outlined the steps it was taking to keep the campus safe, including sanitizing surfaces hourly, spreading out seating, and setting up a tent for students to pick up meals.

“Anyone criticizing Liberty, I challenge them to find another college that doesn’t have some students living on campus,” Falwell told The Chronicle. “Liberty does the same thing as everyone else, and they get attacked.”

A university spokesman, Scott Lamb, said that, as of Tuesday, about 1,900 of the university’s more than 14,000 residential students had returned, and that it was unclear how many more would arrive this week, the first week after spring break. “We have become an apartment complex for international students and those who have nowhere else to live,” Falwell said on Tuesday. “It’s probably the safest place they can be.”

The fitness center will close at midnight, he said, but the library, computer center, and faculty office buildings will remain open. Signs have been placed on every other chair in the library, Falwell said, telling students to spread apart, and only every third computer in the computer center works. Cleaning crews are working around the clock, he said, to keep touchable surfaces disinfected. Dining halls are offering only take-out food.

Falwell told The News & Advance, in Lynchburg, that the university had identified an old hotel, owned by the university, where sick students could be quarantined.

Some students, weighing in on social media, have seemed confused about the mixed messages they were getting about the severity of the crisis and the danger it could pose to them.

Falwell fired back at Baggett on Twitter, defending his decision and complaining that a local reporter had ignored the detailed explanation Liberty had released about its decision-making process. He referred to his critic in the English department as “the ‘Baggett’ lady.”

Current and former students who agreed with her complaints came to her defense.

The decision also drew frustrated reactions from those who worried it could endanger local residents.

In recent interviews, Falwell has accused the media of exaggerating the potential health threat of the coronavirus pandemic. Falwell was an early supporter of President Trump, who until recently also accused the media of sensationalizing the crisis.

Students, Falwell said, are eager to return to campus.

“It’s just fortunate that this disease — this flu — doesn’t have a high mortality rate for young people because they’re the ones that are not worried about it. I’m not worried about it,” he said in an interview last week with Todd Starnes, a conservative talk-show host.

Falwell described the current situation on campus as “sort of a housing complex, with restaurants doing takeout.”

“So we’re really not operating as a university, except online,” he said. “I’m just thankful we have the resources and cooperation of our staff, so we are well equipped to do this.”