FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Around 5,000 students are expected to be moving into University of Arkansas housing over the next two weeks, but it doesn’t look the same as in years past because of COVID-19.
“I’ve always heard how crazy move in is, so we really haven’t experienced the craziness. This has been very easy, well organized, real simple,” Cindy Broder said.
Cindy along with her husband and daughter made the drive from Texas to move their son, Scott into Humphrey’s Hall for his freshmen year of college.
“We were a little bit nervous with COVID, but the university has made so many efforts and attempts to clean all the rooms and social distance and everything that we feel real confident sending our son here,” she said.
The university has made changes to its typical dorm move-in process.
Only 10 students are moving into a dorm an hour and each student is only allowed to have two people help them move in. And of course, everyone must wear a mask.
Assistant Vice Chancellor for University Housing, Florence Johnson says so far the plan is working well. She says they have not changed the way their doors are designed. She says there will be no more than two students to a room.
“There are still the community bathrooms and of course we have a lot of buildings with suites and all of those will work as long as the community, we do the face coverings, the social distancing and washing our hands,” Johnson said.
Johnson says they will be doing two cleanings a day every day of the week at all dorms. Students living in dorms will only be allowed to have one visitor at a time and the visitor has to be a U of A student or immediate family member.
She says they have done a lot of training with their full-time housing staff throughout the summer.
“We’ve also done at least two trainings with our resident assistants specifically on COVID, so I feel confident that everybody is ready to provide these students with a good college experience,” she said.
Students will also have to wear face coverings when they aren’t in their rooms. Students will continue moving into student housing through Saturday (Aug. 15) and then again all next week.