Universities gear up to welcome back students in coming weeks amid pandemic concerns

LYNCHBURG, Va. (WSET) -- For college students across the country, returning to campus in the fall will look very different depending on the school they attend due to the coronavirus.

On Tuesday, a group of local university and college officials came together to discuss plans to return to campus amid the ongoing pandemic.

At the University of Lynchburg, students will return to campus on August 12.

Students will be greeted with welcome bags filled with a thermometer and two masks. Each mask given to students will have been made by someone in the community.

A campus-wide mask mandate and smaller lectures will be the new normal when students return for the fall semester.

"We have received almost 10,000 masks and we have packaged about 4,000 of them so far and they are still coming in," Dr. Alison Morrison-Shetlar, University of Lynchburg's President, said.

These changes are just a few of the realities that college will be very different in the time of COVID-19.

"All of our students, faculty and staff are being asked to take their temperature before they leave their point of residence and then document that on our Live Safe app," Morrison-Shetlar said.

Morrison-Shetlar, who had her first official day as the first female president for the university on Sunday, said that back-to-school discussions are difficult, but that she feels prepared to take on the challenge for the sake of students.

At Sweet Briar College in Amherst County, students will be returning to campus on Wednesday.

"We are looking forward to the new school year but realizing how difficult it will be," Meredith Woo, Sweet Briar College's President, said.

Woo said that the school plans to offer mainly in-person classes with a few exceptions.

"Which is possible because we have a very low student-to-faculty ratio," Woo said.

Administrators at Randolph College tried their best to find a way for the campus to function in-person during a pandemic.

"We renovated two floors of the dormitories to be quarantine space, we marked out the classrooms," Dr. Bradley Bateman, Randolph College's President, said.

Ultimately, the college made the decision to move classes fully online for the fall.

"We know that it is not safe to have people living together in a congregate setting if you cannot regularly test everyone in the population," Bateman said.

Sweet Briar College and the University of Lynchburg said that they will both have testing available for students.