As virus spreads, Brown students pack up, head home

PROVIDENCE — On College Hill on Sunday, groups of students, some wearing facemasks, carried furniture and wheeled carts of their belongings down sidewalks and loaded cars, vans and U-Haul trucks waiting on the street.

Some hugged each other and posed for photos in groups as they said their goodbyes.

Brown University announced last week that it will move all classes to online instruction starting March 30 and asked all students living in dorms or university-owned residences to depart no later than March 22 due to concerns over the rapidly spreading novel corona-virus. On Saturday night, Brown University moved up the departure date to Tuesday, March 17. The Rhode Island School of Design will also shift to remote learning and close all residences on March 22.

“I wasn’t surprised, but I was upset because we’re paying for in-person education, but now we have to go online and stuff,” said Rick Tao, 19, a freshman at RISD who was walking along Waterman Street with a classmate on Sunday.

Tao and his classmate, Dabora Choi, 18, said they both are in the process of moving out of the residence halls. Tao said he has to catch a flight to his home city of Irvine, California, in a couple of days, and Choi said she’ll drive home to New York City.

“It feels like it’s weird that we’re all being sent home,” said Tao, who studies painting. “It seems like they [the school] are putting responsibility away from themselves in a way. There are cases here, but it seems like they’re mostly just trying to shut down facilities so it’s this thing that they don’t have to mitigate anymore.”

Martim Galvao, 31, a graduate student at Brown University, was loading the trunk of a car on College Street on Sunday with equipment from his studio space, which he was also ordered to vacate.

“I was a little concerned about how I was going to keep working on my dissertation project,” said Galvao, who lives in Providence and studies music and multimedia composition. “Right now I’m just thinking about how I’m going to keep working.”

When the state announced that a “member of the Brown community” had been diagnosed with the coronavirus, Galvao said he felt like it was “just a matter of time.”

Brown University spokesman Brian Clark wrote in an email that he could not specify whether the infected person is a student, faculty member or staff member at the university.

“Given information that might be circulating, and the need to protect individual privacy, what I can share is simply that the diagnosed individual is a member of the Brown community,” he wrote. “I don't have additional details to share on identity or travel or health history.”

Gabriela Batista, 22, a senior at Brown who was sitting in the quad with a group of friends on Sunday, said she felt for many students, particularly international students, who have to make long trips homes and may face travel restrictions in their home countries.

“It’s a horrible situation for everyone,” she said. “I think it’s difficult for a lot of students to get closure, especially being my last semester here. But I think as things are increasingly serious on a global scale, I think I’m happy that people are going home.”

Batista, who studies health and human biology, said she lives off-campus in Providence and plans to remain in the city.

“We’re going to be quarantining a little bit or self-isolating in our apartment,” she said. “It really feels like a lesson on life. ... Sometimes things just don’t go the way you expect.”