Dear William Paterson University Parent or Family Member,

I hope that this message finds you and your family members well. I am sure, like many of us, you feel some worry and concern and are finding ways to adjust to the “new normal”. This pandemic has disrupted lives in so many ways, while at the same time amplifying resilience, generosity, kindness and understanding. 

I am writing to you today to bring to your attention recent communications to our students and to ask for your help in reinforcing these messages. Earlier today, President Helldobler sent to all students, faculty and staff an announcement regarding how we will continue to conduct teaching and learning and other operations of the University.  Click here to access this document .

Residents:
For those of you whose family member is a resident student, they received an email from Interim Director Rebecca Baird regarding their residence hall check out.  Click here to access this document

We are facing two realities as we contemplate how best to manage this check-out: 

  1. As you may be aware, on Wednesday Senior Vice President of Administration and Finance Stephen Bolyai sent a communication to all students, faculty and staff to advise them that William Paterson University will become a drive-through COVID19 testing site. Click here to view. We anticipate that this will begin late next week. While not a health risk to our community, this will present significant challenges for access, parking and personnel and therefore it is necessary to have the check-out process predominantly completed by then.
  2. To protect the health and safety of students, family members, and our staff, we are implementing an express check-out process, with social distancing practices. This is counter intuitive to our usual high-touch approach but necessary in these circumstances. This is why it is so critically important that students and family members abide by their assigned time and day and follow the social distancing practices that will be in place and are described in the letter sent to resident students.

I understand that this compressed time-frame and controlled activity may present challenges for some. Please understand that we have over 1700 resident students to check out of 10 residence halls over 10 days. It will be challenging for all concerned and I hope that kind hearts and cool heads will prevail.

As my March 17, 2020 communication indicated, we will provide more information regarding credits or refunds for room and board by April 10. We will be offering them, we just need to sort out the logistics, keeping in mind scholarship and financial aid implications and the complexity of the differing meal plans and residence hall rates. Please be patient.
 
For all of you, I know that these necessary moves to protect the health and safety of our University community will likely be disappointing, especially for our students. We are all disappointed and saddened that we will not see each other on campus, as we do this work because we enjoy working with and interacting with our students. The silver lining is we are finding new ways to deliver content, provide support, and stimulate conversation. I promise you that while we may not be in the same physical community our faculty and staff will be working hard to create these communities remotely. There will be more communications to students from their faculty, the Provost and my office over the next week to help them settle into our new normal and get the support they need. I encourage you to keep checking the website and check in with your family member to see how they are adjusting. As always, we are here to assist and you should let us know if there are concerns.

Be safe and be well.
 
Sincerely,


Dr. Miki Cammarata
Vice President for Student Development
Student Development | 973.720.2750 | StudentDevelopment@wpunj.edu