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Pedestrians walk at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge on March 10. Photographer: Scott Eisen/Bloomberg
Bloomburg
College Towns to Clear Out as Virus Upends Local Businesses
By Janet Lorin
March 10, 2020
Coronavirus is upending college campuses, as schools including Harvard
and Amherst move to online classes and tell most students not to return
to campus.
School communities will get pinched economically.
Colleges operate as mini-cities, drawing thousands of visitors who stay
in nearby hotels and eat at restaurants. They host conferences and
athletic tournaments, and over spring break at this time of year high
school juniors and their families tour campuses.
“That’s going to be a huge impact,” said Nick Seamon, who has owned the
Black Sheep deli and bakery near Amherst College’s Massachusetts campus
for 34 years. “Baseball, lacrosse, tennis, cross country, you name it,
we get orders from parents and tailgate parties.”
More colleges took similar action. Yale University Tuesday asked
students to remain at home after spring recess, as did Cornell. Duke
told students not to return to campus if possible. The University of
California Los Angeles wants students to start the spring quarter
remotely from home.
Princeton University, which “strongly encouraged” students to stay home
after the break, contributes $1.58 billion a year to the New Jersey
economy, including about $60 million in student spending off-campus,
the school estimated in 2017.
Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are
among schools that have already canceled visiting days next month for
admitted high school seniors who will begin college this fall.
Amherst is moving to remote learning beginning March 23, after the
break, the school said Monday. Because the duration of the virus
disruption is unclear, students are encouraged to take as many of their
belongings as possible when they leave campus, president Biddy Martin
said in a letter on the school’s website.
“We know that many people will travel widely during spring break, no
matter how hard we try to discourage it,” Martin wrote. “The risk of
having hundreds of people return from their travels to the campus is
too great. The best time to act in ways that slow the spread of the
virus is now.”
Amherst’s campus will remain open and all faculty and staff were told
to continue their regular work schedules. Schools are allowing a
limited number of students to stay, for example, if they can’t get home
to international locations or their community has widespread cases.
A big factor going forward will be whether colleges can reopen to
students for graduation in May, said Linda Bilmes, a senior lecturer in
public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School.
“The local hotels, restaurants, cafes, shops, car rental agencies and
other local businesses obtain a significant share of annual revenue
from graduation week and college reunions that are held around that
time,” Bilmes said. “These communities will suffer a lot of economic
damage if the colleges remain closed at that time.”
Seamon, whose Amherst restaurant bakes its own bread and makes its food
from scratch, is also worried about the impact if graduation doesn’t
take place on campus.
“I just have to think really hard now how much business we’re going to
have,” he said. “I want to protect my staff and their ability to make a
living.”
The ripple effect around college campuses is huge, just as it is to
communities when conventions are closed, said Stephen Goldsmith, a
professor in the practice of government at the Kennedy School and a
former mayor of Indianapolis.
“The people who can least afford the disruptions, the small retailers
and their employees or contractors, will definitely be hurt,” Goldsmith
said.
He also expects an impact to his own university town, Cambridge in Massachusetts.
“It will look ghostly,” he said.
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