{ "id": "2020-03-10-mit-covid-closure", "slug": "mit-covid-closure-2020-03-10", "institution": { "name": "Massachusetts Institute of Technology", "shortName": "MIT", "state": "MA", "type": "private-r1", "alertSystemName": "MIT Alert", "enrollment": 11500 }, "incident": { "date": "2020-03-10", "type": "covid-19", "cleryCategory": "advisory", "headline": "Undergraduates given a week to vacate while hourly campus workers keep their pay", "headlinePublic": "Undergraduates given a week to vacate while hourly campus workers keep their pay", "summary": "Hours after [Harvard's announcement](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/3/10/harvard-coronavirus-move-out/) on the morning of March 10, 2020, [MIT President L. Rafael Reif](https://orgchart.mit.edu/letters/community-update-covid-19) directed all undergraduates to vacate residence halls by Tuesday, March 17 and announced that all classes after spring break would be conducted remotely. The decision affected approximately [4,500 undergraduates](https://news.mit.edu/2020/mit-acts-prevent-covid-19-spread-0310) and was paired with extraordinary financial commitments: MIT pledged grants for travel and continued payments to hourly campus workers whose jobs would not be needed.", "outcome": "All undergraduate students required to vacate residence halls by March 17. Spring break extended by one week; all instruction moved online beginning March 30. Research operations placed on rapidly-curtailed schedule. Campus did not return to standard residential operations until Fall 2021.", "resolution": "confirmed-threat" }, "alerts": [ { "sequence": 1, "type": "initial", "timestamp": "2020-03-10T14:00:00-04:00", "timestampApprox": "Tuesday afternoon, March 10, 2020", "channel": "email", "verbatimText": "When I wrote last week, we understood that our approach to campus life would need to change, broadly and in many details. As Covid-19 continues to spread, and as public health leaders have offered more definitive guidance, we have come to see that our community has a significant role to play in the concerted public health response to this regional, national and global threat.\n\nState and federal public health officials advise that to slow a spreading virus like Covid-19, the right time for decisive action is before it is established on our campus. Therefore, although the risk to those on campus remains low, given the ongoing spread in our state and elsewhere, we are now escalating our institutional response to protect our entire community – staff, students, postdocs and faculty – and the many communities we belong to.\n\nThese steps obviously disrupt the usual patterns of the semester for thousands of you. You will understandably have many questions. This letter offers our initial answers. I hope we can all be patient and respectful with one another as we cope with this extraordinary challenge.\n\nWe are taking this dramatic action to protect the health and safety of everyone at MIT –staff, students, postdocs and faculty – and because MIT has an important role in slowing the spread of this disease. As at any residential college, our residence halls and FSILGs put students in close quarters. What’s more, the intense and free-flowing collaboration MIT is known for comes with close contact and shared spaces, equipment and supplies. These characteristics, which we cherish in normal times, increase the risk of Covid-19 spreading on our campus.\n\nOur plan follows directly from state health guidance that universities take steps to reduce the density of the population on campus and increase social distancing. By doing so, we are doing our part to reduce the spread of the disease overall, while directly reducing risk for our own community – for departing students, of course, but equally for those of us who continue to work on campus.\n\nAs of this afternoon, in all of Massachusetts, there were 92 confirmed or presumptive cases, 70 of them stemming from a local conference in Boston. We also now know that in late February, we had a recruiter at MIT Sloan who was later diagnosed with Covid-19. This ended up being a low-risk situation for our community – but it might have turned out differently, so we consider this a cautionary tale. (You may read more about it here.)\n\nGiven these realities, our teams have been working overtime to prepare the campus for extraordinary measures, which we are now taking. Here are some of the details. Further guidance will be coming on a variety of topics in the days ahead.\n\nReducing the density of the campus population is a public health measure intended not only to protect our students but to reduce risk for those of us who remain here, including our dedicated staff.\n\nI ask that all of you begin to work with your supervisors to experiment with changes your unit could make to increase social distancing. While more detailed guidance for staff will be forthcoming, our aim is to ensure the safety of the whole community, particularly those who may fall into categories of greater risk; we ask that supervisors be flexible, adaptable and sensitive to conditions in each unit. In case working remotely ultimately becomes necessary, all units should start planning to make that broadly feasible.\n\nFor now, MIT operations will continue as normal, and staff should report to work unless they are sick.\n\nIf you feel sick, it is of the utmost importance that you stay home!\n\nIf you have an underlying medical condition or vulnerability, please discuss the risks with your healthcare providers.\n\nWe also ask that supervisors consider evolving conditions in the wider community that staff may have to contend with, including sick family members, school closures and other potential effects of Covid-19.\n\nUndergraduates who live on campus must begin packing and moving out of their residences by this Saturday, March 14. This also applies to students in our FSILGs. You will be required to leave by noon on Tuesday, March 17. For first-years, sophomores and juniors: Please pack your belongings and make plans to travel home or to another location off-campus as if you do not expect to return here until the fall semester.\n\nFor students poised to graduate: Please pack as if you will not return to MIT for classes. No decision has yet been made about this year's Commencement ceremonies.\n\nTo help you cope with the sudden new challenge, we will be assisting the residence halls to make sure you have ample boxes for packing, bins for moving belongings, dumpsters for disposing of trash and options for storage. We will also help the FSILGs handle this process, and they should work closely with their alumni corporations and the FSILG office. You will receive more detail in the coming days about move-out resources and procedures.\n\nWe will consider limited exceptions to allow certain undergraduate students to remain on campus. However, to remain, you must receive official permission. Students will receive direct communications about this in a follow-up email.\n\nWe will review such requests case by case, and as soon as possible.\n\nWe understand that being asked to leave campus may pose a serious financial hardship for certain individuals. Students will receive a follow-up communication on this matter.\n\nPlease note: Any student who is permitted to stay may be required to relocate to another building on campus.\n\nBecause most graduate students live in apartments – as opposed to dorm-style living with shared facilities – we are not requiring graduate students to move off campus. However, if your individual living circumstances present a higher risk, we may relocate you elsewhere on campus. Graduate Resident Advisors (GRAs) will not be asked to leave campus.\n\nAs with MIT staff, we ask that all research groups take steps to increase social distancing in the workplace, without departing from normal Institute and departmental lab safety procedures.\n\nGraduate students who can work remotely and who can arrange another place to live away from campus are strongly encouraged to do so.\n\nFor now, dining operations will continue with some slight modifications. Self-service stations will be closed; stations will be full service or offered as grab and go.\n\nWe will hold classes as scheduled this week; lectures with more than 150 students will go online as of today.", "isVerbatimConfirmed": true, "sourceUrl": "https://news.mit.edu/2020/letter-regarding-escalating-response-covid-19-0310", "sourceDescription": "MIT News: Letter regarding escalating response to COVID-19 (March 10, 2020)", "annotations": [ "The 7-day move-out deadline (March 10 to March 17) was tighter than Harvard's 5-day deadline because MIT's spring break did not begin until March 16", "The commitment to continue paying hourly campus workers was unusual among peer institutions and was widely cited as a labor-equity benchmark" ], "characterCount": 6528 }, { "sequence": 2, "type": "update", "timestamp": "2020-03-13T16:00:00-04:00", "timestampApprox": "Friday afternoon, March 13, 2020", "channel": "email", "verbatimText": "", "isVerbatimConfirmed": false, "sourceUrl": "https://news.mit.edu/2020/mit-acts-prevent-covid-19-spread-0310", "sourceDescription": "MIT News, reconstructed from contemporaneous Tech reporting", "annotations": [] } ], "context": "MIT's March 10 announcement came within hours of Harvard's parallel statement, and the two institutions are widely understood to have coordinated informally on timing through the Cambridge medical and public health community. The [official MIT News announcement](https://news.mit.edu/2020/mit-acts-prevent-covid-19-spread-0310) emphasized the dual track of academic shutdown and labor commitment, an explicit contrast to peer institutions where hourly workers faced immediate uncertainty. The seven-day move-out deadline created acute hardship for the roughly 800 international undergraduates, [as documented by The Tech](https://thetech.com/2020/03/10/mit-undergraduates-must-leave). MIT's institutional response was also notable for its [research-ramp-down protocols](https://news.mit.edu/2020/research-ramp-down-covid-19-0313): unlike most universities, MIT issued formal multi-stage continuity plans within 72 hours, recognizing that abrupt termination of long-running experiments could destroy years of work. The March 10 decision was driven in part by [confirmed COVID cases in Cambridge](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/03/10/metro/mit-cancel-large-gatherings-amid-coronavirus-concerns/) and by mounting pressure from faculty in MIT's Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, whose members had been warning university leadership for weeks. The decision became part of the rapid Ivy-plus cascade that included [Harvard](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/3/10/harvard-coronavirus-move-out/), Princeton, Columbia, and Cornell.", "keyFindings": [ "MIT's commitment to continue paying hourly campus workers was a benchmark labor-equity move that influenced peer-institution decisions over the following days", "The 7-day move-out window (vs. Harvard's 5-day window) created the same hardships but with slightly more breathing room due to MIT's later spring break", "MIT's research ramp-down protocols were issued within 72 hours and became a model for other R1 institutions navigating laboratory continuity", "The Cambridge medical-public health community appears to have facilitated informal coordination between Harvard and MIT on closure timing" ], "responseTimeMinutes": null, "sources": [ { "title": "MIT acts to prevent the spread of Covid-19 -- MIT News", "url": "https://news.mit.edu/2020/mit-acts-prevent-covid-19-spread-0310", "type": "official-archive" }, { "title": "Community update on Covid-19 -- President Reif's office", "url": "https://orgchart.mit.edu/letters/community-update-covid-19", "type": "official-archive" }, { "title": "MIT undergraduates must leave campus by March 17 due to COVID-19 -- The Tech", "url": "https://thetech.com/2020/03/10/mit-undergraduates-must-leave", "type": "student-newspaper" }, { "title": "MIT, Harvard cancel large gatherings amid coronavirus concerns -- Boston Globe", "url": "https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/03/10/metro/mit-cancel-large-gatherings-amid-coronavirus-concerns/", "type": "local-media" }, { "title": "Letter regarding a significant new step in response to Covid-19 -- MIT News", "url": "https://news.mit.edu/2020/letter-regarding-escalating-response-covid-19-0310", "type": "official-archive" } ], "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "covid-19", "pandemic", "campus-closure", "private-r1", "massachusetts", "cambridge", "research-ramp-down", "labor-equity", "march-2020", "cascade-effect" ], "dateAdded": "2026-05-14", "lastUpdated": "2026-07-18", "addedBy": "ingestion" }