Lane College closes residence halls and moves to remote learning

Usually hundreds of students would be walking up and down this side walk going to class or their residence halls, but today campus is quiet here at Lane College after college officials announced a few changes.

Right before Labor Day, Lane College sent a news release announcing the cease of in person classes and the closure of residence halls.

Classes began on August 3rd and in the 1st week they had one student test positive.

“In the first week we had one student that at some point tested positive and that student had been around one other student and so at the end of that week we had one student in quarantine and one student in isolation", says President of Lane College, Dr. Logan Hampton.

Hampton says they were prepared to have at least 2% of their students being COVID positive.

After contact tracing they were looking at what could have been 100 students needing to quarantine.

“She [the campus nurse] said I have one student that has 3, another student that has 6, and another student that has 10. We started doing those multiples and said man we don’t have 100 quarantine spaces", added Hampton.

So they made the decision to move to remote learning and close residence halls to students unless they were COVID positive, quarantining, or had a unique situation.

Hampton says it was important to make this decision before the numbers got close or even over the 2% they expected.

“In light of where we are, the population that we are dealing with that it just made sense that we do everything we can to slow the spread here on campus", says Hampton.

Right now the campus has around a dozen students in quarantine, down from 18 when they made the initial announcement.

Dr. Hampton says Lane College’s board and his team will be working together to evaluate how students will return. Imani Williams, for 39 News, in Jackson.