The Huntington News February 25, 2022
The independent student newspaper of the Northeastern community
@HuntNewsNU
DORM UPSIZING CAUSES CONCERN AMONG STUDENTS, RESIDENTS By Sonel Cutler and Grace Comer Campus Editors
Photo by Marta Hill East Village currently contains 723 beds, which, under the proposed plan, would be increased to 930 for the Fall 2022 semester. During the public meeting, attendees expressed dissatisfaction with Northeastern’s plan to address the housing shortage.
At a meeting hosted by the Boston Planning and Development Agency Feb. 16, members of the public were able to ask questions and voice their concerns about Northeastern’s plan to add approximately 900 beds to rooms in the East Village, or EV, and International Village, or IV, residence halls. Northeastern released the plan in October 2021 to address an ongoing housing shortage on campus after an over acceptance of students resulted in a record breaking freshman class of 4,504 students, not including those in the N.U.in and NU Bound programs. Previous classes have not exceeded 3,300 in recent years. “Last year’s admissions yield was unplanned and unexpected, resulting in an additional 1,000 first-year students,” said Viktorija Abolina, the associate
vice president of Campus Planning and Real Estate at Northeastern. “Pent-up demand due to COVID deferrals and withdrawals resulted in what we call a ‘bulge year.’” After the proposal was made public, it was subject to a public comment period, which ended Nov. 4, 2021. Following the Feb. 16 public meeting, Northeastern will seek approval from the Boston Planning and Development Agency, or BPDA, board March 10, and according to the plan, the beds would be added to residence halls over the summer in preparation for the Fall 2022 semester. Many students have raised concerns regarding the feasibility of this plan in regards to physical space, especially as it may impact the mental health of student occupants. “I understand that it is a very tight housing situation, and it’s important to
get students out of the surrounding neighborhoods, but it seems like a very poor choice to have that many students sharing that space,” Luke Saville, a 2020 Northeastern graduate and former resident of IV, said at the meeting. Saville showed meeting attendees photos of a single dorm room in IV. The furniture as well as belongings of one resident filled most of the space, and there was little extra room. “How can you expect students to have an environment that is conducive to their ability to study and maintain their sanity, especially first-year students who aren’t going to have any idea what to expect going into this?” he said. HOUSING, on Page 2
Students react to end of mandatory weekly COVID-19 testing
Photo by Marta Hill Northeastern announced Feb. 18 that effective Feb. 28 community members will not be required to test weekly if they are asymptomatic. The COVID-19 data dashboard will also be retired at the end of the month.
weekly testing and the COVID-19 data dashboard will soon be things of the past. “We will continue to monitor developments and adapt our approach as needed,” read the email. “We want to thank each and every one of you for your hard work and agility that has helped us collectively maintain a successful and thriving teaching and research enterprise.” Effective Feb. 28, weekly testing will be optional for asymptomatic students. Those experiencing symptoms, however, will still be required to test. The email also announced that the university is “evaluating” their mask mandate — at some campuses, including Nahant, Burlington, London, Portland and the San Francisco Bay Area, mandates have already been lifted, but the City of Boston and NU’s Boston campus, have maintained their mandates. Once the email landed in stu-
dent’s inboxes, many students took to social media to express their thoughts — some positive and some negative. Some students support the easing of testing requirements and say that as a fully vaccinated community, the risk to most people is low. For Dillon Lewis, a fifth-year computer science and physics combined major, requiring testing weekly, on top of other precautions feels like overkill. “I feel fine about [no longer having required weekly testing]. It’s still optional. People need to get tested if people are feeling sick or if people know others who have COVID and think they were exposed,” Lewis said. “We’re all vaccinated. So what are the vaccines for if we still have to test weekly?” He said the vaccination and booster requirement feels like the most effective way Northeastern
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By Marta Hill Editor-in-chief The latest step in Northeastern’s plan to treat COVID-19 as an endemic came the morning of Feb.
18. In an email to students, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs David Madigan and Chancellor and Senior Vice President for Learning Ken Henderson announced that mandatory
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Dining workers team up with student organizations
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has adapted to control the effects of COVID-19. For other students who don’t support Northeastern’s most recent rollback of restrictions, it’s more of a matter of “better safe than sorry.” “I would like to see Northeastern prioritize the health of the community over the PR of a success story,” said Jacob Kemp, a third year political science major currently on co-op in Greece. “I think there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being safer than sorry because that’s what allowed us to have such a good campus experience over the last year and a half. And I really don’t think that taking 20 minutes to get tested once a week is that heavy of a lift for anybody.” The change in guidance didn’t exactly surprise Brandon Dionne, an associate clinical professor at PANDEMIC, on Page 3