When the City University of New York’s (CUNY) colleges moved to online classes in response to the coronavirus, fliers in Hunter College’s dormitories assured students they could stay in campus housing. So, junior Max Deutsch wasn’t in a rush to move out. A lot of students stuck around. The dorms were a quiet place for online work with easy Internet access, and dorm laundry machines saved them trips to germ-laden New York laundromats. But last week, the CUNY college told him his dorm was shutting down and he would have to move his belongings by Friday.
Deutsch found himself in the midst of a hectic move-out day, with students crowded in long lines containing carts heaped with possessions. Social distancing was nearly impossible, he said. Now, he’s staying at a friend’s place in Queens. He didn’t have high hopes for online learning in his family’s two-bedroom apartment, where both of his parents teach online classes of their own and his brother is remotely going to high school.
Throughout the transition, “no one knew what was going on,” Deutsch said. “No one knew what they were going to do, what was going to happen. For me personally, it wasn’t the end of the world. It was just a massive inconvenience.”
As the state of New York reaches more than 83,700 coronavirus cases, as of Wednesday afternoon, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is turning to college campuses to provide much needed space for hospital beds. To prepare, a number of CUNY and State University of New York (SUNY) campus dorms have been vacated to serve as emergency medical centers.
For the CUNY system, the transition poses a particular challenge. The campuses are a popular, affordable option for the city’s low-income students, including students who are home insecure.
“People say, ‘Oh, CUNY is the most affordable. It’s not like a private [university],’” said Timothy Hunter, chairperson of the CUNY University Student Senate and CUNY student trustee. “However, CUNY also has an average household income of $30,000 a year.”
A senior at CUNY’s New York City College of Technology, and its student government association president, Hunter heard from frantic peers when all students from other CUNY institutions, the College of Staten Island, City College and Hunter College – and some students from Baruch College and John Jay College of Criminal Justice – were asked to move out of their rooms.
