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A boat blowout in Boston Harbor. A clubhouse bash in Harvard Square. An orchard fête in northern Massachusetts.
Some students, determined to end a fraught school year on a note of normalcy, defied Harvardâs Covid-19 rules this past semester in the name of fun â and to the chagrin of some of their classmates.
Concerned by a spike in Covid-19 cases among undergraduates living on and near campus this spring, University administrators have urged students to continue observing public health practices and avoiding gatherings.
âHere in Cambridge and near campus, we see some worrisome trends in the number of positive cases, especially among students living together off-campus,â Dean of Students Katherine G. OâDair and Harvard University Health Services Director Giang T. Nguyen wrote in an April 16 email. âIt is spring, the weather is warming up, and we know that you want to gather with each other; please do this safely, using sound public health pract
As the school year nears a close, administrators in the Dean of Students Office reflected on students experiences during the past academic year amid the coronavirus pandemic in an interview with The Crimson on Tuesday.
Harvard held courses online during the 2020-2021 academic year due to the public health crisis. For the fall semester, the College only invited freshmen and a select group of upperclassmen to live in residence, while juniors, seniors, and a cohort of petitioning students were invited to campus in the spring.
Students living in residence had to comply with a spate of residential guidelines, including social distancing guidelines and Covid-19 testing three times per week.
Administrators at the Dean of Students Office discussed their planning for a virtual iteration of the Collegeâs admitted studentsâ weekend â Visitas â and potential College-sponsored outdoor activities in an interview last week.
Typically, Visitas spans across a weekend in April and welcomes hundreds of admitted students to stay on campus, attend events held by on-campus organizations, and learn about student life at Harvard.
Last year, the College canceled Visitas due to concerns of the Covid-19 pandemic and replaced it with Virtual Visitas, a series of online events and programming that took place over the month of April. This year, the remote version of Visitas is slated to take place from April 17 to April 23.
Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Claudine Gay said in a Wednesday interview that Harvard plans to follow a normal academic calendar in the fall semester as it transitions back to in-person operations.
Gay announced in March that the FAS planning a full return to residential life and classroom instruction in the fall semester, including providing as much in-person learning as possible. To prepare for an in-person fall, the FAS is currently piloting in-person learning experiences, which Gay said began “late last week.”
“The first pilot class was in CS, and throughout the next several weeks, there’ll be a number of class sessions in Harvard Hall,” Gay said. “I also understand that [the Office of Undergraduate Education] is conducting some outdoor pilot sessions, including a singing class in the tent that’s going to set up behind Sever, a performance art class in Farkas, and also some sessions of undergrad lab classes.”