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How Housing Is Looking Different This Semester

Students in single rooms. Some first-year students living on West Campus. Students living in the Washington Duke and several apartment buildings off campus.

As part of the plan to promote public health on campus during the COVID-19 pandemic, housing is going to look very different for at least this semester and maybe into the spring.

By limiting on-campus housing to first-year students and sophomores (and upper-class students with a demonstrated need to live on campus), Duke is reducing the residential population on campus by 30 percent. This de-densifying of the residential halls was advised by university health experts as essential to maintaining the physical distancing needed during the pandemic.

But that act required a lot of shifting of students and supplementing with off-campus spaces. Here are the key elements you should know about who is on campus and where they are living.

  • First-year students, as usual, will be on East Campus, living in single rooms.  But to accommodate the reduction in density, some first-years will also be living on West Campus in Edens, Keohane and Wannamaker Quads.
  • New housing options include the Washington Duke Inn, Blue Light Apartments and Avana Apartments. The Blue Light will likely house the small number of juniors and seniors who require residential accommodation.
  • Duke lifted the requirement regarding who could live off-campus but set specific expectations for behavior. All students in Durham will be required to observe the same practices such as mask wearing, symptom monitoring and physical distancing that are being implemented on campus to curtail the spread of the virus.
  • Residential students who receive a positive COVID-19 test and those who are being monitored for COVID-19 will be temporarily reassigned to quarantine space on East Campus. Those with a positive COVID-19 test and those with suspected cases who are being monitored will be kept separate. Students may participate in remote learning while in quarantine. Duke Emergency Services will staff the building.
  • Housekeeping staff will continue to clean and disinfect the residence halls daily. Students are expected to support this effort by maintaining clean and hygienic practices in common spaces (which will be cleaned by Housekeeping) and their bedrooms (which will not be cleaned by Housekeeping).
  • Housing officials worked to keep housing blocks near each other in single rooms, to the degree available space allowed.

Housing officials will wait until later in the semester to see how pandemic conditions change before completing housing plans for the spring semester. But if there’s a need to continue limiting the residential population, juniors and seniors will then be given priority for on-campus housing.