The many students with belongings still in their dorms received a bit of clarity today about Housing and Residential Life's plan for receiving their personal items.
Students who were slated to graduate this spring will have their items packaged and shipped to their summer addresses, while students returning to campus will have their items packed, stored and moved for their future housing assignments, wrote Joe Gonzalez, assistant vice president of student affairs and dean for residential life, in a Wednesday email to students. He wrote that HRL is close to reaching agreements with two professional moving and storage companies to accomplish this.
Gonzalez added that HRL will release a full plan by the end of April. His email did not explicitly reference what will happen to the belongings of returning students who will be living off campus for the 2020-21 academic year. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Gonzalez wrote that "traditional move out operations will not be possible," citing North Carolina's statewide stay-at-home order that will last until April 30—unless it is extended—the coronavirus pandemic developing around the world and the fact that Duke students are now dispersed across the globe.
"A student leader reminded me today that LDOC is only seven days away. That does not seem possible," Gonzalez wrote. "I hope each of you has made the spring semester work as well as you possibly could under these trying circumstances."
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Stefanie Pousoulides is The Chronicle's Investigations Editor. A senior from Akron, Ohio, Stefanie is double majoring in political science and international comparative studies and serves as a Senior Editor of The Muse Magazine, Duke's feminist magazine. She is also a former co-Editor-in-Chief of The Muse Magazine and a former reporting intern at PolitiFact in Washington, D.C.