University of South Carolina suspends in-person classes through summer over coronavirus
Students won’t have face-to-face classes the University of South Carolina until at least August due to concerns over the the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, university officials said Thursday.
Remote learning has been extended through the end of the Summer II semester, which ends Aug. 1, for both the Columbia and Palemtto College campuses. The university had previously suspended all in-person instruction for the rest of the spring semester but after consulting with the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC), the university’s Student Health Center and the Arnold School of Public Health, university leaders decided to extend the suspension.
“The modeling currently demonstrates that cases of coronavirus are predicted to peak in late April or early May, just before the first of our summer sessions begins, and the virus will continue to pose a threat even after the peak,” USC President Bob Caslen said in a statement. “We feel the risk of communal infection to the campus and the surrounding community in this closed-campus environment is still unacceptable.”
At least a dozen students and one professor at South Carolina have tested positive for COVID-19. More than 1,500 cases statewide have been announced by DHEC. Richland County, where USC is located, has the second-most cases in the state and is currently under a stay-at-home order.
Commencement exercises, which had been postponed from May, are still tentatively scheduled to take place Aug. 7 and 8, Caslen said. All courses, with some exceptions, that would have been offered over the summer will be available online or via remote learning, he said.
The university has also started issuing refunds for housing, parking and meal plans for students. Because classes were initially canceled over spring break, the university is still working to determine a safe time for many students to return to campus to retrieve their belongings from residence halls.
DHEC has projected roughly 8,000 cases of the virus across the state by early May, and a model from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington cited by health officials projects more than 1,000 deaths by August.
This story was originally published April 2, 2020 at 6:35 PM.
