Most students who plan to live in a dorm this fall at UND won’t have roommates as the university continues its plans for on-campus learning in August.
All residence halls and University Place students will have a private room, the university said in a blog post Monday afternoon.
Students will no longer have a roommate, but, in most instances, will have a suite mate in a connected room, the post said.
To offer this change, UND has opened additional residence halls to accommodate the higher demand for space. However, students may need to consider new options since fewer spaces are available in each hall. All students will be given the opportunity to participate in the room selection process with the same priority they had in the initial process.
There is no change for students living in UND apartments.
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Current and incoming residence hall students will receive detailed information from UND Housing on the reselection process.
Meloney Linder, vice president for marketing and communications at UND, said the university will not be charging students for a single-bed rate, however, instead charging for the lower, double-room rate.
Since the pandemic began, Linder said the university has talked about what measures it could put in place if campus life were to return. The campus wants to be as “COVID resistant” as possible, according to Linder.
“We're now in full mode of getting ready for the fall,” she said. “Of course, it’s going to look a little different because you have to have that physical distancing, but we're really excited to have students back on campus and our faculty.”
The university has dorms that were offline this past academic year, so it would be able to get those residence halls going again to accommodate having students in single dorms.
The university, along with many schools in the nation, gave refunds to students who were living on campus this spring after campus was shut for the rest of the year due to the ongoing pandemic.
In addition to the housing changes, the university is also in the process of getting estimates to get thousands of masks that would be available for faculty, staff and students this fall. It is also considering how physical classes will be held and how it could limit large lectures, as well as how to best clean classrooms between uses.
The State Board of Higher Education announced last month its intent to have students back on North Dakota campuses this fall.
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Presidents from the North Dakota University have said that those plans will continue to be shaped over the coming weeks and months.
“This isn't like a switch that's going to be either on or off,” interim UND President Joshua Wynne said last week. “The likely scenario is we're going to vary different plans depending upon what's going on.”
