The majority of Sophomore students at Lehigh have now spent the past 1.3 semesters at home with completely remote courses. In the summer, just weeks before we were supposed to move onto campus, we received an email telling us that Freshmen were receiving residential priority and most Sophomores would not be allowed to return. While some Sophomores attempted to find off-campus housing after this announcement, it proved to be extremely difficult as it was sent so close to the beginning of the school year and Sophomores are traditionally required to live on campus. Despite what the decision meant for Sophomores, we understood that a Freshman’s first semester is an important part of adjusting to college. It was also written that all on-campus students should prepare to move out after Thanksgiving, making room for a new housing situation in the Spring. The past few months have been a challenging experience for all of the remote Sophomores, as we continue to grapple with online classes, isolation from college friends and mentors, lack of access to campus resources, and adjust to increased time at home; nevertheless, we have continued to put our best efforts into our courses with the hope that we would return in the Spring. 

According to the email sent by Lehigh University on October 29, 2020, approximately 200 more students will be allowed to return in the Spring in addition to the students that are already on campus. No current residents will be required to move out after Thanksgiving. Additionally, there are five priority groups who will be offered these 200 spots. “Sophomores” are listed as the final, least-prioritized group. An excerpt from the email will be included at the end of this section.

This decision is unacceptable to Lehigh Sophomores and those who care about us. If it is carried out, the majority of Sophomores will have spent a total of 2.3 semesters completely remote. Sophomores have already spent nearly full tuition on the past 1.3 semesters of completely remote courses. 

This handling of housing completely disregards the difficulty posed by certain curriculum requirements. For instance, some Sophomores who have on-campus lab requirements were asked to push them back to this coming semester. Sophomore engineering and science students, in particular, are faced with rigorous, stringent course loads that have been mandated by the university, requiring specific classes during different semesters; now, those students are forced to rearrange their schedules to allow for in-person classes later in their academic career, some of which are prerequisites for other classes. Thus, this two-semester delay will be caused directly and solely by the University’s “least priority” label of Sophomore students, forcing students to adjust their course progression. This decision also disregards the campus resources that Sophomores will now have been prevented from accessing for a total of 2.3 semesters. This includes technology and certain academic resources. For these reasons, it is critical that the University allows the majority of Sophomores to reside on campus thereby fulfilling the promises made by the University to students. 

Despite many of Lehigh’s peer schools, including Villanova, Tulane, and Bucknell, accommodating Sophomore students, Lehigh persists in prioritizing the needs of first-year students over second-years rather than attempting to treat them equally. The fact is that over a year of remote instruction is not what we signed up for when we chose to attend Lehigh over other schools. Remote education is isolating, lacks the same academic efficacy as an on-campus experience, and requires an incredible sum of money for the same experience most other schools could offer. These are not assumptions, as we have spent the last eight months experiencing the shortcomings of remote education. The claim that remote instruction can replace the Lehigh experience has proven to be untrue. In addition, the psychological damages directly caused by the University as most of us have not seen fellow Lehigh students in person since March of 2020 compounds the negative impact of remote learning. According to Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Consortium survey of 30,725 undergraduate students conducted in May-July 2020 at nine public research universities, 35 percent were positive for major depressive disorder and 39 percent for generalized anxiety disorder. The prevalence of major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder is higher among undergraduate and graduate students who did not adapt well to remote instruction. The expectation that the majority of Lehigh Sophomores will be willing to go through this for a third time in a row implies either a complete misunderstanding or disregard of what is being asked of these students. 

The decision to keep the majority of Sophomores off campus is unnecessary when a plan was already in place to have most current residents moved out after the Fall semester. According to this original plan, Sophomores could be moved in for the Spring 2021 semester in place of those who moved out. This would not affect COVID-19 prevention strategies, as in all cases the beginning of the semester will see students returning from around the country.

It is Lehigh’s responsibility to offer Sophomores the opportunity to have at least one semester on campus this year, for both academic and social reasons, as was offered to Freshmen in the Fall. If the ability to house students exists, Sophomores should be the class priority for residential housing during the Spring 2021 semester.

The email sent on October 29 reads:

“In the spring, we plan to allow students currently living in residence halls to remain in on-campus housing and intend to modestly increase our fall undergraduate housing capacity. 

Approximately 1,250 undergraduate students are currently living in on-campus housing. All students currently living in residence halls can retain the same room for the spring. They do not need to apply for housing and do not need to remove their belongings from their current room before Thanksgiving break unless they choose not to return to on-campus housing for the spring. 

We are determining the final number of undergraduate students we can accommodate in on-campus housing. With the opening of the new Singleton, Hitch & Maida Houses, we can house an additional 200 students on campus who do not currently have spring housing in Bethlehem. We are also re-evaluating the density of students living in all of our residence halls and the use of university housing for quarantine or isolation space to determine how many students we can house safely on campus.  

...Undergraduate students in the categories below may request to live in a residence hall for Spring 2021. Spots will be filled in the following order:

1) Newly matriculating students, including transfer students, who will be enrolling in their first semester at Lehigh
2) Students in special circumstances such as those whose living environments impede academic progress
3) Seniors currently living out of the Bethlehem area who have academic needs to be on campus for completing graduation requirements
4) International undergraduate students who were newly enrolled in the fall, but who were unable to arrive on campus for the Fall 2020 semester
5) Sophomores
It is possible that the capacity of our residence halls will not allow us to house as many sophomores as request rooms. If this occurs, we will implement a housing lottery to make assignments based on the spaces available.”

This petition was co-authored by several Lehigh students.