A station is set up for cadets to check in before cleaning their room inside the Law Barracks at The Citadel on Wednesday, April, 22, 2020, in Charleston. The 2nd and 3rd Battalions were allowed to retrieve their items to provide time for maintenance before the summer. File/Gavin McIntyre/Staff
Cadets and professors at The Citadel likely will be able to return to campus in the fall to resume their studies, officials announced Tuesday.
The tentative plan is for freshmen students to return to campus for Matriculation Day on Aug. 17 and for upperclass students to return Aug. 25.
While the goal is to continue college operations with as much normalcy as possible, officials emphasized the plan to return students and faculty to campus in-person requires flexibility to adhere with any laws, executive orders and best practices as deemed necessary amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Like many other colleges across the state, The Citadel switched to online-only learning in March to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
“The development of our online resources in the past few years allowed our faculty and staff to quickly pivot to the fully online instruction needed due to the pandemic,” school president Gen. Glenn Walters said in a statement. “However, the heart of The Citadel brand is our Corps of Cadets and the residential, military model used in achieving our mission to produce principled leaders. With that in mind, developing plans for the return of the Corps is a primary focus.”
The Citadel is the second major public college in South Carolina to release specific plans for fall reopening, following the University of South Carolina’s announcement last week.
The public military college is working to offer coronavirus testing for everyone who will be on campus in the fall and to develop the capability to re-test throughout the semester as needed, according to a news release.
The school did not have specifics to share publicly Tuesday regarding what cleaning protocols will be in place, how students will be housed or how it will handle on-campus cases of the virus.
Last week, Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island began using the college’s barracks to house some 300 new recruits for two-week increments as they wait out potential coronavirus symptoms before they’re sent off to the boot camp.
Approximately 300 Marine Corps personnel will remain on campus throughout the summer as new sets of recruits are ushered in.
“Although we are proud to serve this important national security mission, it is important we set conditions for the return of The South Carolina Corps of Cadets and the in-person experience for which The Citadel is known,” Walters said.
The college has contracted an expanded cleaning service to help with the recruits, who are also provided with meals and laundry while they are housed on campus, spokeswoman Kim Keelor said.
When students do return, classrooms, barracks and common spaces will likely operate differently than how they did when campus closed, Walters said.
Most summer courses will continue online as originally planned, but a handful will be offered via face-to-face instruction, especially those that include lab elements, Keelor said.
The college said it hopes to maintain it’s fall athletic schedules “as fully as safety allows, following established pandemic protocols,” but specific details are still being