Tiana Catala (COM’22), here moving into her room at the Harriet E. Richards Cooperative House on Bay State Road, was among the first students to arrive on campus during the annual fall semester Move-In, this year scheduled over two weeks rather than the usual one to allow for proper social distancing.

Student Life

A Quiet Start to Move-in

Students begin to arrive and are greeted by a robust COVID-19 testing plan, mask requirements, and a campus that’s been waiting for them

There were lines of students with their parents, boxes, bags, and crates, some tearful goodbye hugs—in a lot of ways the start of Boston University’s 2020 Move-in looked familiar. But there were also masks, new, required forms to be filled out to try and keep the campus safe, lots of hand sanitizer, and plenty of other signs that this year’s Move-In, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, is anything but normal.

The annual ritual started Saturday and will continue for two weeks, rather than the typical one week, allowing for a more staggered schedule and making it easier for students and their families to keep the necessary distance during these unprecedented times. And on social media, from Twitter to Reddit, there were also reports, usually anonymous, sometimes not, calling out people for not wearing masks or maintaining adequate social distance, but also encouraging peer pressure to get people to keep their masks on.

BU has officially launched its robust coronavirus testing protocols and plan. According to the University’s new COVID-19 Testing Data Dashboard, which launched Monday, the University has 5,376 test results from its five testing sites and 5,270 were negative (98.03 percent), 8 were positive (0.15 percent), and 98 were inconclusive (find an explanation of the inconclusive results here). The busiest testing sites were at Agganis Arena and the 808 Gallery. The average time for a coronavirus test swab to be processed was 32 hours. (Seven of the eight positive students were in isolation, with one confirmed noncontagious.)

“So far, things are running pretty smoothly,” says Catherine Klapperich, a College of Engineering professor of biomedical engineering, who is helping steer the BU Clinical Testing Lab, where the swabs are analyzed. BU expects to eventually test between 5,000 and 6,000 people daily. “We have a lot of moving parts that need to be coordinated as we scale up, and that is happening,” Klapperich notes. “Students appear to be committed to testing and to helping us all make BU a safe place to learn this semester.”

The University says the compliance rate for students is high, with just 25 students, or 1.9 percent, of those who checked in not yet tested or scheduled to be tested. (Students dropping off their belongings with plans to return in early September are required to update their status on their student link, or risk appearing as noncompliant.)

As of Monday morning, 5,998 students remained to arrive on campus by August 31, the last day of this year’s extended Move-in, says Paul Riel, associate vice president for auxiliary services. “Move-in is going very well,” adds Robert Molloy, Boston University Police Department deputy chief, amid the overlay of logistical precautions, with masks, social distancing, and other protocols. “It is organized, and everyone seems happy to be coming back.”

Priscilla Francois (CAS’23) was among the first move-in wave Saturday morning—in her case, to Claflin Hall. Asked for three words to describe how BU feels in this bizarre year: “I’d say different, quiet, and clean,” she says. “The actual building itself is a lot cleaner than it was last year,” because of the University’s sanitizing protocols.

Life under the University’s pandemic precautions hasn’t seemed especially burdensome, she says, except for getting from Claflin to the West Campus dining hall, which is between Claflin and Sleeper Halls. To maintain a one-way pedestrian flow to help with distancing, students can no longer use the Claflin entrance to the dining area. That’s now exit-only, Francois says; students must walk outside of Claflin and enter the dining area from its Sleeper entrance. “You pass the entrance to the dining hall, which you’re not allowed to go in. It’s frustrating.”

While it’s no big deal now, she’s dreading having to make the outside walk in the winter. Still, Francois is glad to be back on campus. “I personally just couldn’t work in my home environment. I feel like if I’m too comfortable, I just won’t get enough work done,” she says. “I just missed Boston. It’s a nice city.”

For Sarika Nadar (Questrom’21), an RA at the Towers on Bay State Road, returning to campus is a part of reclaiming an ordered life in upended times. “For me, it was important to try and have a somewhat normal last year of college, and I truly enjoyed being an RA last year,” she says. “Being an RA is to be a resource and help people, which is why, despite the circumstances, I wanted to come back. As much I enjoyed being home with my family, the energy in Boston and BU is different. To perform well, I needed to be in a space that motivates me. For me, that is being on campus.”

“Move-In was seamless,” Nadar adds, “and it was really easy scheduling my COVID test, and the process itself was easy. So far, it is hard to comment on the ‘stay in place’ protocol [for students returning from outside the few lower-risk states], as I have only been here for a week and classes have not started. But so far, BU has put a lot of safety guidelines and changed how things will operate to ensure safety and try to limit the spread of COVID.”

Some local residents remain anxious about the influx during a pandemic, however. The Comment thread to BU Today’s Move-in preview last week included a post from a Bay State Road resident who lives with an elderly mother, whose age puts her at risk from COVID-19. “Walking down Bay State Road, we are seeing many cars in the community from higher risk COVID-19 states,” the poster wrote. “I feel that you are inviting out-of-state families for this move and that this poses a great risk for our community.…I am seeing campus police on patrol, but they are not addressing when families are doing more than just moving in the student but also hanging out on campus and in the community without quarantining.”

Because BU is one of the first area colleges to begin bringing students back, there was also more outside media coverage of the start of Move-in than normal.

“A periodic trickle of eager students and concerned parents,” reported WBUR, the University’s National Public Radio station. 

The Boston Globe contrasted past years’ swarms of students with the sparser, socially distanced group that arrived over the weekend. “It’s like…a little bit of [the excitement of] coming back to school tempered by the fact that you see maybe five people on the street,” Evan Jimenez (COM’23), told the Globe after moving into his dorm Sunday from New Jersey.

His father told the paper there was also some relief: “He’s been home the last few months, and he’s been climbing the walls.”